Happy Hols, Not

The theory is that during Parliament’s six-week summer recess the MPs slip away with their buckets and spades and the government machine quietly ticks over. In practice, this year at least, there’s no rest for the wicked, or the not so wicked, or anyone else trying to keep the show on the road. As our Political Correspondent Peter Spencer reports, the Prime Minister wouldn’t be human if he didn’t sometimes wish he’d never got the job in the first place.

Top of Keir Starmer’s what-the-hell-do-I-do-about-this list this weekend is the Israeli government’s jackbooted mission to take over all of Gaza. Or, rather, what’s left of it.

Given that two million half-starved and homeless people are still trying to stay alive there, it’s little wonder that accusations of ethnic cleansing and genocide are becoming ever more widespread.

Keir Starmer has been forthright in his condemnation of the move, and now looks almost certain to press ahead with his plan to formally side with the Palestinian cause.

Seems like a no-brainer, but could come at a cost.

It’s a topic little talked about, for obvious reasons, but UK does have close links with the Israeli security apparatus, and these have in the past helped thwart terror attacks on our soil.

And, grotesque though this will sound in the current climate, armaments that British defence companies sell them are a nice little earner. Albeit right now a hideous one.

Behind all that there’s no knowing what the boss across the pond might make of our approach.

Yes, we do have a special relationship with our Yankee chums, but we also had close ties with India during the days of The Raj. An equal partnership? Discuss.

Back on the home front, meanwhile, poor Keir’s having to fend off charges of running a sleazy operation. Bear in mind that the latest ministerial resignation is the ninth, in just a year.

Has to be said that the optics of Rushanara Ali’s rush to the exit were altogether eye-popping, excuse pun.

The Homelessness Minister? Flouting the very anti-homelessness law that the government’s most anxious to bring in? Then maintaining she’d done nothing illegal?

A well-known East End saying springs to mind: ‘You having a laugh, me old china?’

Rushanara Ali sure was, at the expense of folk living in a townhouse she owns. First chucking out the existing tenants, then, just weeks later, whacking up the rents for a new lot.

The underlying problem Starmer’s having to address is that his large shadow ministerial team before the election had to be drawn from rather a small pool of MPs. Some, clearly, not up to the job.

One more thing then for his to-do list before Parliament splutters back to life at the end of the month. Sorting who to hang on to and who to chuck out.

He’s also got the seeming intractable task of trying to figure out how the hell to get the message out. To get people to understand what he’s trying to achieve and what actually is going on in Britain.

Presumably as a sop to voters who might be considering sloping off to Nigel Farage’s anti-immigrant Reform Party, he’s having a little tinker with the arrangements concerning asylum seekers.

Whether sending a few people arriving on small boats back across The Channel will discourage others from trying remains to be seen.

In addition, it’s questionable whether it’ll curb the enthusiasm of those bent on whipping up violence outside hotels housing the incomers.

But what is beyond any shadow of doubt is that many of those who join in the protests are lamentably ill-informed about what’s actually going on.

A YouGov survey last week revealed that nearly half of us seem to think that most incomers to this country got here by the back door.

In reality, according to official Home Office figures, illegal immigration accounts for just four per cent of the total. The other ninety-six per cent came with the government’s blessing.

Another well-known saying springs to mind here: ‘A lie gets halfway around the world before the truth can even get its boots on.’

Attributed as it is, variously, to Mark Twain or Winston Churchill or someone from even further back, it is manifestly out of date.

In the digital age a lie can whiz right round the globe many times over before anyone’s even got the foggiest idea what the truth was supposed to be in the first place.

Still, that’s no reason why Starmer shouldn’t try a bit harder to set the record straight, instead of going to such lengths to address bogus concerns.

But if he feels boxed in on that front, it’s not the only one.

As this year’s autumn budget glowers ever closer, the economic outlook becomes ever more awkward.

Though borrowing costs have just been cut to their lowest in two years, rising food prices are pushing inflation up. Meaning the Bank of England may yet have to do the same with interest rates.

But all that’s as nothing next to dire warnings last week from the respected and non-aligned number crunching think tank the National Institute of Economic and Social Research.

These guys reckon the Chancellor’s sums have gone awry to the scary extent of something over forty billion pounds. And the only way to sort that will be to raise taxes by as much as she did last year.

Her ducking and weaving wheezes back then earned her more enemies than funds, while if she’d gone for the obvious revenue raisers the pain would have been spread wider but shallower.

But here’s where this particular boxed in bit comes in. Having sworn not to raise income tax, VAT or National Insurance on employees she’s still stuck with ducking and weaving.

That is, of course, unless the government does finally get the hang of telling people things. About money as well as migration, and indeed its own mission.

That said, economic pictures do come in all sorts of shapes and shades, some a whole lot prettier than others.

Take the case of one Cambridge-based antiques dealer who prefers to remain anonymous but most certainly did strike ever so lucky at a recent house clearance sale.

Having spent years watching the BBC TV show Fake or Fortune, he knew he was onto a winner when he spotted a certain signature scrawled at the bottom of one rather odd looking painting.

He freely admitted he wouldn’t much fancy hanging it in his own living room, but calculated, rightly, that some else would be happy to, and to shell out big bucks for the privilege.

The auction was a doddle, with only one other punter even vaguely interested in the pic. And, having got it safely home, he quickly got it checked out by specialist expert Nicolas Descharnes.

This man was delighted to confirm that, albeit not painted in his usual style, it was definitely the work of a renowned surrealist. Er, Salvador Dali.

Oh happy day for the eagle-eyed dealer. And oh what an if-only for the sweating, swotting geeks in Eleven Downing Street.

Outlay one hundred and fifty pounds. Expected income twenty to thirty grand. Eat your heart out, Wilkins Micawber.