Political column – September 11

And he's hiding in plain sight.

Either that, or Boris Johnson is re-enacting a task he was given while in the Young Etonians Business Club. Y'know, imagining he's Keynes, Marx, Engels, Bevan, Lenin, Dave Spart, or whoever.

Don't be fooled by the fact that he went to a posh private school. Everybody knows that the hotbeds of the Commies were not back-street pubs in working class districts, but the toff-heavy independent schools of England. He even went to Oxford, for heaven's sake, which admittedly is not quite as bad as Cambridge.

After that social care vote in the Commons this week, I wouldn't have been surprised if the strains of the Red Flag had broken out from the Conservative benches.

This is where Boris The Commie is taking us. Massive tax burden. Massive public spending. To hell with austerity and fiscal responsibility. This is what happens when the Labour Party disintegrates.

His sidekick Rishi Sunak has presided over the fraud-friendly furlough scheme and looks everywhere for drains to pour public money down.

Sir Keir Starmer doesn't know what to do. He is the opposition, so he has to be against. So he instructed his MPs this week to vote against more money for the National Health Service. Cripes! Is that what things have come to for Labour?

What remains to be seen is whether free-spending, free-taxing Boris can retain his electoral magic touch. That's why the Tories have got him, because he gets votes. But this is a different order of taxation. It is mega taxation.

Boris never put that on the side of a bus. Or maybe he did. For all I know, it might be £350 million a week, but I haven't got the maths skills to work that one out.

Hands up all those who want more money for the NHS. (Lots of hands go up).

Hands up all those who are prepared to pay a little more in tax to achieve more money for the NHS. (Lots of hands still go up).

Pencils to ballot papers of all those prepared to vote for parties imposing extra taxes. (The pencils hover uncertainly).

High taxation parties, or at least those which are openly high taxation in their manifestos, haven't a prayer at election time. A better policy is to lie in the manifesto and say you are not going to raise tax, and then do it anyway. Manifestos are not to be taken seriously, like economic forecasts in the Budget. They just give politicians, journalists and commentators something to talk about during election campaigns.

The great thing about this week's announcements is that ordinary folk will no longer have to pay more than £86,000 on their care costs. Derrrr!! (That's the best word I can think of for a buzzer sound.) That's just smoke and mirrors. It doesn't mean they won't have to pay more than £86,000, because they will still have to pay all the overheads like accommodation and food, which are massively expensive.

This is Boris' Britain. All together now... "Raise the scarlet standard high, Beneath its folds we'll live and die..."

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I made a big mistake the other day when I watched a Norman Wisdom film and thought I was watching Gavin Williamson.

Great entertainment, with the gormless expressions and the repeated pratfalls. What a clot!

Mind you, Norman Wisdom is funny as well.

I did wonder if they might be related, twins perhaps, but on balance think that it is unlikely considering that Norman was 95 when he died back in 2010.

With Gavin on some sort of personal homage to a British comedy icon, I think I need somebody who can tell me who is who.

Mr Grimsdale! Mr Grimsdale!

.............

The perils of so-called smart devices.

I have been puzzled as to why in our household we have been listening to a local Yorkshire radio station.

The answer to this riddle became apparent when I overheard my wife talking to the device to summon her favourite radio station.

"Alexa, play Great British Radio," she said.

"Playing Great Driffield Radio," it responded.