RICHARD LITTLEJOHN: Maybe the Tories ought to stand down for Reform UK

Where is it written that the Conservative Party has a divine proper to rule? Or that Tory MPs are entitled to carry on to their seats, just because the Labour various is simply too horrible to ponder?

Why, too, ought to Nigel Farage be anticipated to return to frontline politics following his profitable foray into the jungle?

But that is the narrative which the Westminster Bubble has seized upon following Reform UK’s spectacular election yr launch this week.

There was widespread disappointment over Farage’s non-appearance at Wednesday’s press convention thrown by the get together of which he’s honorary president.

Reform is presently nudging 10 per cent within the polls and the Second (or is it Third or Fourth?) Coming of Farage would enhance that share to 14 per cent.

There’s nonetheless no assure that the successor to the Brexit Party would win a single constituency. But it will cut up the Right-wing vote and will deprive at the very least 35 Tories of their seats — and that has set alarm bells ringing at Conservative HQ.

Tories have been queuing as much as urge Reform to face down candidates within the former Red Wall, which turned blue in 2019 and Labour is predicted to win again this yr. Conservative Party chairman Richard Holden (me neither) wailed that each vote for Reform was successfully a vote for Labour and would hand Starmer a landslide victory.

But whereas Reform chief Richard Tice agrees that ‘Starmergeddon’ could be a catastrophe, he thinks the Tories aren’t any higher. Which is why he plans to discipline candidates in each constituency.

The insults being flung at Tice — Tory deputy chairman Lee Anderson known as him a ‘pound store Farage’ yesterday — solely serve to point out that the Conservatives are working scared.

So they need to be, after years of in-fighting, incompetence and squandering an 80-seat majority. When Tice argues that there is little distinction between the 2 principal ‘socialist’ events, it is tough to disagree.

An allegedly Conservative Government has delivered the best taxes in 70 years, an enormous enhance in authorized and unlawful immigration, 5 million individuals economically inactive, and a strike-ridden public sector the place nothing works correctly and civil servants do not even flip as much as the workplace greater than three days per week.

‘Starmergeddon’ could be ten instances worse, particularly if the Labour chief’s speech yesterday is something to go by, which included a promise to introduce votes for schoolchildren aged 16 — a cynical ruse to gerrymander a everlasting socialist majority.

And who’s to say {that a} yr into the subsequent time period, the Labour Left do not transfer in opposition to Starmer and set up an Angela Rayner authorities, with a comeback for Jeremy Corbyn?

After all, the Tories have dumped two prime ministers up to now couple of years with out troubling the citizens.

So Reform’s low-tax, anti-woke manifesto, coupled with a pledge to slash immigration and scrap the web zero nonsense, is enticing to small-c conservative inclined voters — regardless that beneath our present electoral system the get together has no likelihood of forming a authorities.

Don’t neglect that in 2015 Ukip hoovered up 4 million votes however ended up with only one MP. Yet Tice has dominated out an electoral pact with the Conservatives. And rightly so. In 2019, Farage generously stood down Brexit Party candidates to offer the Tories a free run — and Get Brexit Done.

But Farage did not get the peerage he deserved and though Brexit obtained finished, after a vogue, different assurances made on the time weren’t honoured. So Tice is correct to take a leaf out of the Pete Townshend songbook:

Won’t get fooled once more.

Which brings us to Nigel himself, recent from his stint on I’m A Celebrity — confounding the parable of Farage as a ‘far-Right’, swivel-eyed, xenophobic monster. According to the most recent polls, his approval scores are greater than Rishi Sunak. The Brexit Party is the one get together this column has ever enthusiastically endorsed.

With hindsight, the perfect final result of the 2019 election would have been a Tory/Brexit coalition. Farage’s Merry Men might need stored the Conservatives trustworthy, compelled them to stay to their manifesto and prevented them descending right into a self-indulgent orgy of backstabbing and chaos.

So a lot as I’d prefer to see Nigel again, I would not blame him if he determined to take a seat issues out. To be truthful, what’s in it for him? He’s finished his bit, far past the decision of obligation, enduring a torrent of private and bodily abuse within the course of.

His sixtieth birthday is developing and he is entitled to benefit from the fruits of his labours. Time to earn a number of bob. He’s a pure broadcaster and his GB News present goes nice weapons. He’ll even be in demand within the U.S. this yr, as a part of Donald Trump’s Flying Circus.

Yes, the prospect of a Labour landslide is simply too horrible to ponder. But it appears inevitable, regardless of the citizens’s lack of enthusiasm for the robotic, charisma-free yuman rites lawyer Starmer, who is much extra Left-wing than he pretends to be proper now.

Yet should that imply Reform ought to withdraw candidates in order that self-entitled Tory MPs, who’ve made such a pig’s ear of the previous few years, can maintain their seats?

Maybe a greater concept could be for the Tories to face down and provides Reform a free run.

‘Nasty’ Nigel is entitled to be presumed harmless

The fallout from the Jeffrey Epstein/Harvey Weinstein scandals is that when distinguished males are accused of sexual misconduct the presumption of innocence goes out of the window.

Nigel Lythgoe is nothing to do with both, but he’s the most recent male celeb to face groping allegations.

Known right here as ‘Nasty Nigel’, due to his position as choose on ITV’s Pop Idol, he is carved out a profitable profession within the States as producer of American Idol and creator and choose of So You Think You Can Dance.

Three ladies, together with fellow choose Paula Abdul, are suing him for sexual assault and battery relationship again to 2001. But why now, when there hasn’t been a whiff of impropriety throughout his lengthy profession? Could it’s one thing to do together with his reported $120 million fortune?

None of us can ever make certain what goes on behind closed doorways.

But I’ve identified Nigel for 30-odd years since I labored at London Weekend Television, the place he was head of Light Entertainment.

I discover these allegations tough to consider. ‘Nasty Nigel’ is a confection for tv. He most likely will not thank me for this, however he generally is a little bit of a pussycat in non-public, particularly with ladies.

As I stated, solely these concerned know the reality. And males who sexually abuse ladies deserve every little thing they get.

But, for now, Nigel Lythgoe is entitled to be presumed harmless.

Scientists have been given £1 million of taxpayers’ cash to give you a scarf to cease individuals clenching their jaws and grinding their tooth.

It is claimed that bruxism — the technical time period for tooth grinding — prices the NHS £3 billion.

Where do they get these figures from? And with seven million individuals on ready lists and junior docs on strike once more, would not the cash be higher spent elsewhere?

If something goes to trigger you to grind your tooth, it is the present state of the NHS.

The jury is again on my new mugshot. Curiously, a lot of readers have written to say it makes me appear to be Genial Harry Grout, from Porridge, performed by the late Peter Vaughan. I’m very disillusioned in you lot. Very disillusioned certainly.

It sounds just like the jury’s not solely again, they’re all within the pub over the highway having delivered a unanimous ‘responsible’ verdict.

So here is one other one…