Convenience Big Store: More trouble at No 10

24 July, 2021

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Jon Connell

Editor-in-chief

UK politics

More trouble at No 10

Dominic Cummings's interview with the BBC's Laura Kuenssberg was "wonderful theatre", says David Aaronovitch in The Times. Apart from Cummings telling us about the PM's "plan to kill the Queen" with Covid ("I see her every Wednesday!"), what jumped out was the revelation that within days of getting Boris elected, "Baron Frankenstein so despaired of his flawed creature" that he plotted to destroy it and make another to replace it. Yes, Cummings admitted, "I made Johnson, and I failed to unmake him". That, he implied to the viewer, is now your job – if you're up to it. Because while Cummings has gone, Johnson is still here, "waving his arms about", incapable of concentrating and "a liability" every time this country faces a complex situation requiring hard decisions.

Anyone who thinks Boris "lacks statecraft" should think again, says Charles Moore in The Spectator. Cummings quotes his boss as saying: "We can't kill the economy just because of people dying over 80." This is clearly intended to shock, "but should it"? Cummings is an obsessive, seeing "only one right path". But a prime minister's job is not like that. In clarifying his thoughts, he may express them "luridly, in private, to his trusted advisers", with a reasonable expectation that they won't be revealed a few months later. "Boris was not being casual or callous: he was thinking out loud." He would be unfit to lead if "counter-thoughts" never entered his head.

We already know Dom's diagnosis, says Peter Franklin in UnHerd: "Boris is a clueless bluffer, Carrie is an interfering minx, that sort of thing." But you have to admit he's basically right. The PM is, as Cummings has put it, like a "shopping trolley", constantly veering off course. It requires "a huge expense of time and effort" to get it back on track, "only for it veer off again". And if you look around the Cabinet table, he's hardly fielding an "A-team". The original line-up was selected to amplify a simple message: get Brexit done. Of course, Johnson is no Cummings: "He's not going to reinvent our entire system of government," But what he can do is reinvigorate his ministerial team. "Time to get on with it."

The shape of pings to come

📳 🦠 This Monday we should have been celebrating Freedom Day, says Allister Heath in the Telegraph. Instead "we are driving ourselves mad with an absurd pingdemic". More than 600,000 people were pinged by the NHS Covid-19 app last week – forcing them to self-isolate. In London, the Metropolitan line closed over the weekend because of staff shortages in the control room. Supermarket shelves are empty because workers are stuck at home. Boris Johnson, Rishi Sunak and Keir Starmer are all self-isolating. And we call this freedom? The government needs to accept that Covid is the new flu and move on. If the pingdemic is a victory against the coronavirus, "what does defeat look like"?

Love etc

I am a passionate advocate of afternoon sex, says Kayla Kibbe in InsideHook. It beats evening sex because you're not too tired from work, too drunk from a night out or too full from supper. And it's better than morning sex because you're not worried about your breath or getting out of bed in time for work. Then there's lighting. "Establishing the perfectly dimmed balance for sex post-sundown can be a lengthy ordeal involving multiple lamps, candles and different lighting configurations." In the afternoon you're limited to two options: curtains open or closed. And everyone looks better in natural light.

Best of all, afternoon sex is almost a form of bragging. "If you're in a position to be having sex in the middle of the day, you probably have it pretty good." You're either on holiday or free of work or parental obligations – "all of which are enviable states of being".

Life

Follieri with Anne Hathaway. Joe Schildhorn/Patrick McMullan/Getty Images

The conman who enchanted a Hollywood star

The last time I spoke to Anne Hathaway was in 2008, says the Oscar-winning actress's ex-boyfriend Raffaello Follieri in the Daily Mail. "Annie's last words were "I love you for ever" and we ended the call." That was at 2am on June 24. Four hours later Follieri was arrested for fraud. "I never spoke to Annie again." While he spent four and a half years in prison, Hathaway severed all connection and became a global star. "She made a business decision," he says, speaking about their relationship for the first time. "She decided saving her career was most important. I am not bitter."

They met in 2004, when Hathaway was 21 and making a name for herself in Hollywood. "I invited her to lunch, but I was late. I sent her roses to apologise." The actress was charmed by the Italian property dealer, who was four years her senior, tall, dark and handsome. He was, as Hathaway would gush to her friends, "a god". Better still, he was staggeringly rich. He showered Hathaway with presents: sapphire earrings, emerald necklaces, topaz bracelets.

But she had no idea where the money was coming from. In 2008 Follieri pleaded guilty to conspiracy, wire fraud and money laundering following accusations that he had misappropriated $50m from investors who included billionaire Ronald Burkle, a close friend of Bill Clinton. They thought they were buying Roman Catholic churches, and that Follieri was linked to the Vatican. In reality he was a scammer, and the money was going towards buying Hathaway presents. "I was in my twenties," he says. "I was superficial. You can absolutely say I flew too close to the sun." Lesson learnt. He's now out of prison and running a £150m oil company in Saudi Arabia.

Property

THE COTTAGE Timber-framed Church Cottage, in the pretty Warwickshire village of Ladbroke, half an hour from Stratford-upon-Avon, has a thatched roof and classic Tudor looks. But it has been sympathetically restored and extended, with a library and a four-oven Aga in the wood-beamed kitchen. Two of the five bedrooms are ensuite and the garden backs on to open fields. £1.35m.

Zeitgeist

Normans must pay for their crimes

Restorative justice for the victims of colonialism is "an idea whose time has come", says Sahil Mahtani in The Spectator. Universities in particular are bending over backwards to investigate even the remotest link to slavery. It's tempting to suggest we should spend our time righting the injustices of today, rather than those of the distant past. But if these wrongs are not righted, they will live on in our collective shame and the victims' descendants will continue to suffer. Instead of abandoning the principle of restorative justice, "we should be expanding it".

One "glaring" example is the great evil visited on the Anglo-Saxons by the Normans in 1066. The effect on English society was "enduring devastation". Through "war, invasion and genocide", the Anglo-Saxon ruling class was almost entirely replaced by the French arrivistes. We can calculate the cost. By 1086 the Normans had stolen almost a third of England's 12.5 million acres of arable land, divvying it up into baronial estates. At a conservative estimate, that land is now worth £7,000 an acre – a total of £25bn that the Normans owe Anglo-Saxons for the conquest. Reparations must be made, of course. Perhaps a tax on the Lampards, Vardys and Gascoignes, payable to the Bamfords, Bransons and Ecclestones?

Eating in

Addicted to oat milk

"When I left rehab back in 2017, I naively thought that I had done my last battle with addiction," says Bryony Gordon in the Telegraph. Four years later I found myself hooked on oat milk. It started innocently – after all, "oat milk is the darling of the wellness scene". I would smugly pour it into my coffee, thrilled with my dairy-free virtuousness.

Then, "before I knew it, I was drinking it neat, like vodka". I planned my day around my next fix and bulk-bought 56 cartons at a time. If a coffee shop didn't serve oat, I would skulk out "like a drunk denied more alcohol in a pub". And I'm not alone: sales of oat milk in the UK almost doubled to £73m last year.

The trouble is, oat milk is processed food – just like the cereal and granola bars I was proudly scoffing. When a concerned friend pointed this out, "I was shocked by how many so-called healthy things were full of chemicals". In addiction terms, it's "a bit like doing lines of cocaine". Now for the good news: giving up is rather easier. Sure, the first three days were dark – nausea, fatigue, headaches. But after that, life back on good old-fashioned cow milk felt effortless.

Quoted

"Instead of a British bulldog, the prime minister is starting to resemble one of those preposterous Pomeranians that ladies who lunch carry around in their handbags."

Camilla Tominey in The Daily Telegraph