Britain needs a leader who’ll say ‘this is what’s wrong and how to fix it’

THERE was a Budget this week. Interested? No, me neither.

There was something about childcare, and petrol got cheaper or more expensive. I can’t remember which.

Because by that stage, like two Members of Parliament who were actually present at the debate, I’d fallen fast asleep.

The problem is that this Government doesn’t seem to have a plan. There’s no direction.

It’s like they’re in charge of a ship which is pottering about in the middle of the ocean and they think that if it doesn’t actually sink, they’re doing a good job.

What we need is a captain who breaks out a map and says: “Right everyone.

“This is the nearest port and I don’t care how many storms we encounter on the way, that is where we are going”.

That’s what we got with Mrs Thatcher. From her first day in charge, she knew exactly what she wanted to do.

Smash the unions. Make people responsible for themselves.

Sell all the state assets. And massively lower taxes.

Then we got Blair, who also had a destination in sight, so he too knew what was necessary.

Do what Mrs Thatcher was doing but wear a red tie while doing it.

Since then, though, we’ve had a succession of captains who spent their days sorting out the linen and wondering how many sausages the passengers should have for breakfast.

Apart from Mrs Truss, obviously, who decided the best thing she could do was put a bomb in the engine bay and break the prop shaft.

And now we’ve got Rishi Sunak. What’s his goal? What’s his vision?

What does he think the country should look like in ten years’ time?

I’m not sure he thinks about that. Mainly because he’s too busy hauling lifeboats over the side, which are full of people from other ships, even though he’s run out of cabins and there’s not enough food to go round.

And meanwhile, all of his officers are sitting around all day dreaming up exciting new initiatives that actually aren’t exciting at all.

Why doesn’t he get them into his office and say: “Right. Fire half the managers in the NHS. Build a gigawatt factory. Stop interfering in farming.

“Ditch that bloody silly new railway. Put Lineker’s phone in the bog.

“And enough with the cycle lanes already. Oh, and this afternoon come back and I’ll give you some more jobs to do.

“Now get out and get cracking.”

Instead, he’s just sitting there in his gold-plated slippers, waiting until Captain Starmer takes over.

And God know what will happen then.

Old Lego head used to say he wanted to turn hard left but then he realised he won’t be elected if he does that, so he’ll probably just go round in circles, like Sunak and May and Brown and all the others.

We need a leader. We need someone to stand up and say: “Right. This is what’s wrong with the country and this is what I’m going to do to fix it.”

Claim’s butter idiocy

4

MY local council went medieval on my farm shop last year, saying I had to remove from the site the lavatories, the tables and chairs and even all the plants.

And no, we couldn’t have a car park either.

Well, this week the whole thing went to appeal and a barrister hired by people in the nearby village – yes, if you’ve seen Clarkson’s Farm, that barrister – decided to single out the butter we sell as an example of why the shop shouldn’t have a car park.

I couldn’t understand his reasoning either, and then it got even more complicated.

He said that because it says Diddly Squat on the label we are charging £5 for it, and that, as a result, it’s just a souvenir.

A souvenir? Really? Who goes to Rome and brings some butter home as a memento?

Or New York? “I could have come back with a model of the Statue of Liberty but instead I’ve got this pack of Kerrygold.”

And to make his argument even more shaky, our butter doesn’t say Diddly Squat on the label, and at £5, it’s actually two quid cheaper than a tub of Lurpak from the supermarket.

Tom in freeze frame

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IT’S said that Tom Cruise is all set to film new scenes for his next Mission: Impossible movie on the remote island of Svalbard.

Well, good luck with that, mate.

Svalbard is a three- hour flight from the top of Norway.

It is a spit from the North Pole and, as a result, it is very cold.

How cold? Dunno, because it’s cold enough to freeze thermometers.

I went there once, to make a military documentary about the Arctic Convoy PQ 17, and tried to film a piece to camera on the beach.

It didn’t go well because my mouth refused to work.

And then my eyes froze over and then the camera iced up and then the cameraman’s arm became so weak he couldn’t hold his camera any more.

We ended up with some shots of my feet, and a few grunts.

I have no idea what Tom Cruise is planning to film up there but I hope it isn’t much and I hope there’s no dialogue.

Because otherwise he’s going to be sorely disappointed.

Spare sharp Hugh a dressing down

4

HUGH GRANT came in for a lot of stick this week for being rude to interviewer Ashley Graham as he arrived at the Oscars.

Well, I’m sorry, but she did ask him what he was wearing, which seems like a pretty dumb question to me.

So I rather enjoyed his answer: “My suit.”

A wee marvel

FOR decades, scientists have tried to understand why water simply won’t stick to the leaves of a lotus plant or the wings of a dragonfly.

And then, a few years ago, they had their eureka moment and developed something called super-hydrophobic paint.

Apply it to any surface and all liquids simply bounce off it.

Having done this, they needed to find an application.

And this week they came up with one. At the Cheltenham races.

It was applied to all walls around the famous track so that anyone who’d had a few too many and felt the need to relieve themselves would find their wee hit the wall and then boinged straight back on to their trousers.

The wonders of the modern world, eh?