What A Time To Be Alive

Whatever happened to Flattop Bob Conley? Perhaps Governor Henry McMaster will track him down and appoint him to serve the remainder of Lindsey Graham’s term? But they no longer have any of that in Kentucky. Mitch McConnell had already declared his intention to retire at the election on 3 November, but should the vacancy arise within 56 days of that date, then there would be too little time to hold a special election. To keep Thomas Massie out of the United States Senate, McConnell cannot be declared dead before 8 September. Such is the country that, 250 years ago, was founded in no small measure by those whose ancestors had fled Ulster because the victory of the Papally supported side at the Battle of the Boyne had unleashed discrimination against Presbyterians and even persecution of them.

Yet who are we to mock? William Hill has just cut to 5/1 the odds on Count Binface’s victory at Clacton. And what legitimacy could Andy Burnham claim as Prime Minister? The legitimacy of the victorious 2024 Labour manifesto, which promised to abolish leasehold, to make employment rights begin with employment and apply regardless of the number of hours worked, and to equalise the national minimum wage regardless of age, but which did not mention the erosion of the right to trial by jury, or the abolition of the automatic right of appeal from the Magistrates’ Court to the Crown Court, or the imposition of digital ID, of live facial recognition, and of access to our NHS data on the part of Palantir? Burnham is making the right noises on jury trials, so hope springs eternal. But his intention to bring back James Purnell and Josh Simons suggests that he is the Wigan Keir.