Finally, a chance to report back on life in the slow lane at The Château d’If. The fact is that it has been far from slow. Firstly, we’ve been working hard on trying to get the BOP ratings into some sort of presentable order. The number of rabbit holes that we have explored would beggar belief.

We had something of a breakthrough this morning: Betty and George, my two AI helpers, have told me that some of the figures we have produced over the last two weeks have been quite encouraging.

One of the rabbit holes - and I use the term advisedly as shall be clear - was revisiting the work done by my late, old friend John Carrington, who developed what was essentially a stochastic method for measuring trainers’ form. I have been trying to replicate his work, but let me manage future expectations by suggesting that a fair comparison of my developments would be to suggest that Mowgli could recreate Einstein’s work. It’s doable - but in much the same way as monkeys will eventually write Taming of the Shrew, given sufficient time and paper.

Anyway, in brief, this week we consistently achieved sensible ROIs for the top 2 in the ratings, and, when combined with a high trainer score, they generated an 18.5% win ROI. Combine that with a speed rating, and we get a 27.1% win ROI. One of the key alterations in our rating set is that we have started utilising a percentage of runners beaten (PRB), which is combined with the ratings to give us a more clearly defined score. With me so far? Keep up at the back there, Snodgrass!

The problem is, of course, that every time we fiddle with it, we have to go back to the drawing board and recount everything to check our figures, so it is quite a long process. So slowly, slowly - but I do think we will have a clear daily set of ratings ready by Royal Ascot.

This, of course, assumes that betting will be allowed in the future. I can’t believe the Gambling Commission hasn’t had the cojones to simply say they are not qualified to make a decision on affordability checks. The nonsensical argument that they have been putting up, driven entirely by corrupted data, some of it possibly deliberately, plus the machinations of a health lobby, which is already incapable of managing a decent computing system, beggars belief. I’ll say it again, just in case anybody from the Gambling Commission is reading this: you cannot ask for affordability checks on people having a flutter and at the same time run the National Lottery. You can’t ask people to justify having a bet and yet not ask them to explain how they are on benefits and able to afford a car on credit, have a Sky TV subscription, and purchase season tickets for football matches. It is just grotesque.

In the meantime, the Canadian Grand Prix paddock at the Circuit Gilles-Villeneuve is deluged by new levels of gossip, innuendo, politics and evil deeds, much of it - who would have guessed??? - surrounding Red Bull, Horner and Max Verstappen.

Despite publicly cooling the fires at every opportunity, Max remains the epicentre of the paddock’s biggest long-term narrative. Speculation refuses to die that

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What a simply splendid weekend!

Well done to the brilliant Aaron Rai, who finished at 9-under; the first player from England with his name on the Wanamaker Trophy since Jim Barnes in 1919. Then another well done to Antoine Semenyo, who’s gone from Bournemouth player to FA Cup final hero for Manchester City after scoring the winner at Wembley. I came close with my 90-minute draw, but it was such a tight game that it never looked like a goal-fest.

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Also bad luck for Max Verstappen, who came so close to winning the Nürburgring 24-hour race but had a serious technical problem only three and a half hours from the finish. And of course, the magnificent Darina Nikolaeva Yotova, aka Dara, whose magnificent bosom and her Bangaranga song swept all before it in Vienna.

Of course, there were plenty of Losers, but I was struck again, on a Saturday afternoon, by just how many involved complaints about VAR. FHS, how difficult can it be? The referee says “No,” or he says “Sí.” End of. Don’t like it? Off. Argues with the ref in a manner prejudicial to the good order of the game? Five-match ban. Either get tough or get rid of it.

Tragically, my greatest concern - and this may yet cause me an emotional crisis - Andy Burnham sort of agrees with me!

The other losers were mostly anyone representing the UK in Eurovision - plus ca change - but the easiest 9/2 anyone has ever offered - UK to come last! Anyway, before we got to the easy money, and out of the blue, we were invited by Chums to share a Chinese takeaway and watch the Eurovision Song Contest. The Aldbourne Kitchen provided… delish. Hosts provided limitless Majestic, and inevitably, Eurovision being what it is, and jolly people being what they are, and having put the box on pause so that we could eat, it turned out to be what might be considered by Gen Z v2.0 to be a late night.

There was more racing on Sunday, which I hadn’t really been expecting, and then a chum came round to advise on the garden and then someone else came to be advised, and then I was told to make a spot of lunch.

Even at the risk of blowing my own trumpet, which I am loath to do, I have to tell you that my simple carbonara was on this occasion a total triumph, not least because I had forgotten that I had in the fridge some Samphire from last weekend. Astonishingly, it was still crisp, so I chucked it into the last minute of the pasta cooking, drained the whole lot, and then added the sauce to the pasta. Samphire in with your pasta was a revelation.

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The sauce was essentially a lot of EVOO (Greek, I think, and slightly peppery, which I like), a large onion, diced, some fresh oregano, and two packs of diced, unsmoked supermarket pancetta. Some garlic and not too high a heat. It’s a sauce, as Nanny used to say, not a Chinese Laundry. Lots of ground pepper and a smidge of salt - depending on the actual meat. For the pasta, I used fresh egg Rigatoni, which I prefer to spaghetti, only because I think the ridges hold the oil and cheese better, and also because if I have any left over, it is easily converted to an al forno dish, as the Rigatoni will keep its shape and bite.

I know there are plenty of purists who will say, “Oh, you can’t use that, and you can’t do it that way, and this is the way that carbonara is meant to be.” But, as it was a dish that was invented only a decade before my birth, I think we’re all entitled to give it whatever twists and turns we like, provided we’re all heading in the general direction of the joy of breaking bread with chums.

Yes, in a perfect world, we could, of course, use Guanciale, cured pig’s cheek, but very rarely can you get it in your local supermarket. However, you can buy a kilo from Amazon for about £30 a kilo, and it is worth it. I have incidentally used Alsacienne Bacon or Pancetta before, and it is a stunning meat. Free-range pigs on a diet of wild herbs and grass produce belly with good fat cover, clean flavour, and a good, tight structure that holds up the curing and smoking process without becoming either too dry or overly salty. Smoky, firm, and well-balanced, you use it in exactly the same way. Dice it into lardons for pasta sauces, fry it with onions and garlic as the base for stews and braises, roast it alongside vegetables, or crisp it and crumble it over anything that needs a hit of smoky, salty pork. I often have some in my homemade Cassoulet. And—it works particularly well in carbonara if you find Italian guanciale too fatty—the firmer texture and bolder smoke give a different but equally satisfying result. Sadly, I cannot find anyone who imports for less than £50 a kilo, so just get a mate to bring some back in the car.

Anyway, as it was, I used the cheap and tatty pancetta, the olive oil, garlic, onion, and fresh parmesan, all working perfectly, and then - just before serving - one raw egg per person, whisked up and poured into the mix - OFF THE HEAT - and stir. Some people throw in some grated parmesan now - I leave that up to people to do themselves. Others use cream instead of egg - Okee dokey - but you need a lot more pepper and garlic.

Anyway, it was so good that I’m actually going to share the recipe with you and hope you do something similar yourself…. Oh, I have already… OK, here’s a picture:

The Eurovision Song Contest is tonight.

I have now identified Victoria Swarovski, the 32-year-old female presenter. She is a 5th-generation member of the multi-billion-dollar Swarovski empire. She works as a model, is a singer, hosts the German version of Strictly Come Dancing, and heads up the ORIMEI fashion brand. “I don’t want to focus too much on my family’s company; I just want to focus more on my own company. So that’s why I just wanted to try to separate that a bit.” She then just avoided a Ratner Prawn Sandwich moment by saying, “It would be obvious if I were to wear Swarovski, I would think. Instead, I’m going to wear a very big brand that is actually doing jewellery with diamonds.”Her current boyfriend is Mark Mateschitz, 34, the son of late Red Bull co-founder Dietrich Mateschitz. So we can all stop worrying about her now, or the idea that Eurovision is the presenters’ graveyard. It did Terry Wogan’s career no end of good, and it doesn’t appear to be hindering Graham Norton’s either.

Anyway, what have we got for your delight…

Here is a brief insight into the running order, timing, voting and songs themselves. (When the word “brief” is used in Eurovision, it isn’t an English brief… more like an Italian “brief”)

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It is one of the burdens of my life that many people see me as some sort of aesthete with a penchant for idleness, kummel, silk jammies and the occasional Cohiba Behike. Nothing could be further from the truth. I am often seen toddling off to the local for a Guinness, and occasionally I’ll meander to Lambourn’s Goodies - the Stablelads Caff - for a slimming breakfast, 10 items for £7. Yes, you’re right, I am a man of the people!

Thus, I am also aware that the FA Cup is on today. I am also aware that Portsmouth is not in the final, so I am not what might

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So, as Josh finally says, yes, after much pleading, and heads off to the Lords; and as Andy Morenorthernman agrees reluctantly to take his seat and crash the market; and as we lose Saint Wes of Bloodbank, from Emergency Ward 10, where’s Our Ange?

Luckily, it turns out that she has managed to spring free from the jaws of Honourable Members Regulating Corruption and faces no further charges, your honour. If it weren’t all so desperate, you would howl with laughter at hers and the coat-tailers’ earnest sincerity in hoping that we will finally believe she was always innocent and seeks only our long-term good.

Sadly, the smell of rotting fish, from this whole tax farrago, makes it impossible for me to smile whilst clenching my nose.

It is a fact that HMRC’s Stamp Duty investigations currently take just under three years (35 months) on average, and that’s because there are no staff. Bizarrely

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Not the worst day ever - officially 5 pts down, but there was plenty of gleaned info to make ends meet. However, just as I was settling down to another evening of Plat de Paspourmoi (10lbs+ if you must know), I started a minor seizure thanks entirely to reading about some wretched organisation called Action on Salt & Sugar, which is based at Queen Mary University of London

Who the hell do they think they are to go around telling people who are gasping for the trimmed leaf from a bloody radish to eke out their current calorie intake, what to put in their mouths? Who asked them to do it? Am I paying for their bloody education in any way? Do they get a grant from the Ministry of Stating the Bleeding Obvious?

My angst led to my almost immediate decision to hold a Grand Bouffe of some magnitude, simply on the grounds that these self-righteous ghastlies had thought it OK to go around measuring sandwiches for a living! ASS, as it is known in medical circles, had found the time AND funding to go out, buy, and analyse 546 sandwiches and could thus state with no fear of contradiction (or in my case, who gives a toss), that a single sandwich from posh bakery Gail’s has more salt than nearly five McDonald’s cheeseburgers or 10 rashers of bacon. It could state that Gail’s smoked chicken Caesar club contains 6.88g of salt - more than the limit of 6g of salt that adults are recommended to consume in a day.

Then they found a spokesman, who said it was “alarming” how much salt was in sandwiches and that people should not be exposed to a “hidden health risk every time they buy lunch”. Quite apart from the fact that 30% of the working population isn’t working, and another 30% are allegedly, but only because they have a jiggly thing for their mouse in Bogota, no one can afford to go out to buy lunch - especially from Gails.

But it gets worse! Some ASS

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It couldn’t be more ironic, but the final day of The PGA Championship this year will fall on Sunday, May 17th, which also happens to be the US Government’s National Day of Prayer to celebrate the 250th anniversary, called Rededicate 250 … or is it?

In fact, it turns out that - as with everything involving the implosion of the American psyche - the festivities have been hijacked by the Trump administration to create a partisan, sectarian event, which is being cast as “a national jubilee of prayer, praise, and thanksgiving.” It’s being planned and led by a group called “Freedom 250,” and not the Congress-created America250, a bipartisan, government-funded nonprofit to lead the 250th birthday celebrations. But POTUS Trump apparently didn’t like Congress overseeing his own MAGA-led politicisation of the year’s celebrations, so he created his own Federal body, Freedom 250, to lead various festivities, including this Sunday’s day of prayer. When they’ve finished saying Hi to Jesus, there’ll be a crypto-sponsored Ultimate Fighting Championship mixed martial arts match on the White House lawn next month on Trump’s birthday. Huzzah!

I’ll bet they’re looking at us and thinking to themselves, “… now that’s the way to run a country!”

So, Trump aside, tomorrow the PGA Championship heads to Aronimink Golf Club in Newtown Square, Pennsylvania, just outside Philadelphia. It is hard to imagine a more fitting stage

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Through the first part of the sporting and events bonanza, with all my predictions making it or, as in the case of Boy George, sadly falling by the wayside. Still, he’ll have a lovely week there, and it’s not as though San Marino won’t be picking up his hotel bill and sorting out any issues for him!

Back in Blighty, the King reads some stuff he knows is sadly undeliverable tosh, and that it is tosh that weakens not only his country but all its citizens, due to the ineptitude and lack of ability of the people who actually wrote it. However, he and his dear Mama knew better than to chuck it aside and say out loud - is this really the best you can do? Just before the PMS millionth reset and public announcement of a new set of undeliverables, Wes Streeting announced he was definitely pulling his trousers on and getting ready to do things and that they were important and he was going to be doing something very very soon because it was impoertant and he was on it and we weren’t to hold our breathe because it was goign to happen right this very moments away…

Meanwhile, the Dante meeting gets underway

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As Jess Philips goes off into the undergrowth, harrumphing about all she has done for women, one might recall her rather unsupportive role in establishing an independent inquiry into the Grooming Gangs. I hesitate to use the word obstructed, but what is clear is that Jess Phillips, in October 2024, rejected Oldham Council’s request for a government-led inquiry and instead said Oldham should run a local inquiry itself. This potentially delayed a national inquiry, but also signalled reluctance from the government, and contributed to a perception of institutional defensiveness. Anyway, she has resigned and given Starmer both barrels of her .410.

Tomorrow we have the first day of the Dante meeting, but first and probably more importantly, tonight we have the first semi-final of the annual “song” contest, which is known as Eurobitch in the cafes of Amsterdam's Reguliersdwarsstraat district.

Imagine a geopolitical summit organised to discuss unresolved Balkan tensions and the impact of the arts on vegans. The entire summit is organised by theatre kids, powered by sequins, with a few unnamed Grannies with clipboards doing important things. Somewhere in the background, there is a Committee of people who were elected by a deeply mangled proportional representation system, that selected them on their height, LGBTQ+ gaydar rating, colour sense, views on cattle and lack of political interest. These people created the rules.

With a solid infrastructure like that, you would be unsurprised to know that every year, the nations of Europe, plus Australia and Israel, for reasons nobody fully understands, gather together to determine which country can produce the loudest emotional crisis while suspended from wires above a wind machine. Each country has to submit one song, a group or performer to sing it, and approximately three tonnes of LED lighting and the same amount of dry ice.

There are five known song types, and every year there is a backstage competition to see which country has produced one song each year to cover the spectrum.

The styles are Scandinavian Ice-Pop, which is about emotional resilience. The songs are always performed in dry Ice and often involve Amazons dressed in fur. Then there is the traditional Mediterranean nightclub anthem involving fire. Every performance is a Health and Safety film in its own right. It wouldn’t be Eurobitch if you didn’t have at least one post-Sudetenland cultural nod towards the joys of the European countryside. These are often performed memorably by milkmaids, with cream on their cleavage. The collapse of communism saw a rise in Eastern European techno-folk, traditionally performed by a man dressed as a haunted chess piece and preyed upon by dancers in grey diaphanous flammable plastic. Finally, there is an earnest British ballad which finishes 23rd despite being technically competent. Often, European countries will put an English song in to avoid hosting the competition next year.

There are three main elements to the Eurobitch production: the Semi-finals (tonight and Thursday), The Final (Saturday), and the diplomatic incidents (ongoing). Five countries are boycotting due to Israel’s inclusion (Spain, the Netherlands, Ireland, Slovenia and Iceland) - but Bulgaria, Romania and Moldova are back after some years away.

The five countries that pay for most of this and, in return, get a free ticket are always referred to as the “Big Five”: the UK, France, Germany, Italy, and Spain. However, with the last two boycotting the event, it is entirely possible that they won't be paying anything, so because the UK didn’t read the small print, and we’re way more gay than Germany, we have to pay for the other two as well.

The Voting - and Starmer should take a look at this - runs two systems in parallel. The Jury Vote has professional music experts who have to pretend this is about artistic merit. Thus, they reward vocal control, composition, originality, and occasionally San Marino or Andorra. Meanwhile, the Public Vote is entirely dependent on patriotism, neighbourly affection, historical grudges, attractive accordion players, or whether the supporting dance group has to walk through a wall of water.

The scores are announced by bilingual and very nervous compères from the host country’s broadcaster who are always ideally unsuited to the role, but recognise that if they’re cute, they might be offered a slot on Italian late evening TV. Sadly, they have to rely on a competent floor manager to connect the stadium live to some European city to get their score, and live TV being what it is, this is not always possible.

Simultaneously, and just as the host nation is finding its stride, the other end suffers from one of three problems. No sound, no picture, or yet more people inflating their career prospects by being wacky or cute - but never talented. Because of a technical delay, they finish being cute just as the host nation finally connects and starts to laugh politely. The ten-second delay leads the voting nation to start being hilarious again, this time simply to show off their credentials for Berlusconbni TV by talking in bad Italian. This voting process lasts approximately four and a half years.

Somebody eventually wins; usually either Sweden, Ukraine, or a nation that nobody had previously realised had a solar-powered goat factory that doubles as an LGBTQ+ cafe, an artistic venue, and a vegan restaurant.

We only discovered this the following year when they had to pay the penalty for winning, namely hosting. This means they have to build an arena, find 50,000 volunteers, and explain to the taxpayers why a man dressed as a chrome falcon is now hanging from the town hall.

Meanwhile, the United Kingdom spends the next twelve months insisting the whole thing is deeply political, despite having entered a song that sounded like the music played in a regional airport Pret A Manger at 6:12 am. Despite all that - and because I can - I will, like everyone else, be watching it. Because beneath the glitter, and unfathomable solos, and alarming quantities of dry ice, Eurovision is one of the few moments each year when half the continent gathers together simply to be ridiculous at the same time.

Also, it is a betting fest, and my tips and a few thoughts are….

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Having suggested yesterday that we are in no danger of becoming a dystopian approximation of the already-dystopian Weimar Republic, Gilts immediately headed towards 6%; Starmer said no, and every studio discussion sounded like an announcement from Suez.

Every chattering voice on the always-on-in-times-of-crisis radio keeps using variations on a theme involving Party, Nation, Electors. “… for the good of the nation and the party - it’s why we were elected…” or “… has to consider what is right for the country and the party and to honour the wishes of the electorate.”

Inevitably, at these moments, one can’t help but wonder why we’re in this constitutional stew, whether there is a possible solution, and if there is, why we have never adopted it. The answer, of course, lies with an intellectual Irishman - a persona so often at the heart of British troubles!

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Enter Stage Left, Edmund Burke. Born in Dublin in 1729 to a Protestant solicitor father and a Catholic mother, Burke occupied from the outset that peculiarly Anglo-Irish position of simultaneously belonging to the establishment and standing faintly outside it. He was educated at Trinity College Dublin, drifted toward London, flirted with literature, journalism, and philosophy, and eventually found his way into politics as an intellectual operator, which, in the absence of TV, radio, and the Interweb, meant that if you could write well, you could quickly get an audience. He combined political theory, aesthetics, history, philosophy, and that increasingly endangered ability to think in complete paragraphs.

Edmund Burke developed his theories in a world where communication travelled slowly, electorates were limited, information ecosystems were fragmented naturally, and MPs exercised a degree of independent judgement because, in the 18th century, most voters (don’t forget how few actually were allowed to vote) had no way to monitor their MP, no daily news cycle, no means of coordinating opinion at scale. Mediation wasn’t a philosophical choice — it was a necessity born of distance, illiteracy, slow communication, and limited franchise. Burke was essentially codifying the only system that could exist… at the time.

Burke’s famous argument — that an MP owes his constituents not merely his industry but his judgement — rested upon a world in which representation in Parliament was not conceived as a rolling emotional plebiscite. It was a deliberative institution composed of people expected to think, compromise, negotiate and occasionally resist public passions.

In Burke’s time, of course, political identities were less rigid, information moved slowly, and party structures were comparatively loose. The average voter was not being algorithmically bombarded twenty-four hours a day by emotionally manipulative political messaging carefully designed by communications consultants with behavioural psychology dashboards open on a second monitor.

But in the endless whir of automated cameras and hundreds of international hacks standing in Downing Street, and the feeling that once again our country is being mocked, aren’t you beginning to suspect that the constitutional furniture no longer quite matches the room in which it sits?

We continue solemnly invoking parliamentary conventions, Burkean theories of representative judgement and the majestic ambiguities of the unwritten constitution, while the actual political environment has mutated into something Edmund Burke would probably have regarded -and possibly correctly - as deeply, catastrophically dangerous, a nervous collapse by the State.

Once again, we are hearing the siren call of constitutional reform being bandied about, mostly by very ordinary politicians, and normally concerning Proportional Representation. PR is a ghastly and incorrect phrase because it is a bit like calling an Octopus a mollusc - correct in fact, but pointless in description. PR has at least five different manifestations, and all of them result in schism, immobility, and a depth of political ordinariness that defies the laws of motion. For the moment, put that voting reform from your mind - but consider this.

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If every time an MP crossed the floor, was sacked or lost the whip, there was a by-election called, or if every time a PM was sacked, swapped or discarded, there had to be a General Election, do you think that the local constituency or the nation would believe that they, the voters, had a hand in the process, rather than some faceless room full of people you never heard of deciding that there would be a second ballot on the third day when Crab was on the menu? Of course they would.

Might it also be possible that this constitutional change, which provided the voters with a mandate for change, might increase trust in the process, and thus, there would be far fewer cases of such behaviour?

The traditional arguments against such reforms are familiar enough. Britain, we are told, elects Parliaments rather than Prime Ministers. MPs are representatives rather than delegates. Members are elected as individuals exercising judgment rather than merely as branded voting units under party control. The Westminster system depends upon flexibility, continuity and the capacity to change leadership without permanently plunging the nation into constitutional melodrama. What tosh, and only reasonable, if one were trapped in a space-time continuum between 1780 and 1951.

We do not inhabit that world any longer.

Elections are no longer principally contests between local representatives. They are nationalised, presidentialised and increasingly tribalised media events revolving around the buzz-words of leaders, branding, emotional affiliation, culture-war identity, targeted messaging, and manipulative digital architectures.

The average British voter is not selecting The Honourable Member for Dun Scratching to use his prudent judgement on tariff reform. They’re voting for him or her because she is pretty, or he looks sensitive, and they are the Monster Raving Who Cares party. They don't tell reporters I voted for him; they say I voted Labour.

They are voting for party identity, leader image, manifesto package, tribal affiliation, and an emotional narrative about the country itself. Think that through… tell me I’m wrong about Starmer, or Maggie’s second election, or Blair’s.

Modern political parties now possess communication capabilities unimaginable even twenty years ago. Electorates are no longer addressed as coherent national publics. They are segmented into increasingly granular psychological tribes that receive carefully tailored narratives calibrated to emotional susceptibilities, fears, and cultural instincts. Different voters effectively inhabit different political realities. They’re buying the data we keep pretending we’re protecting.

One scarcely needs full-blown conspiracy theories to recognise that modern electoral politics increasingly resembles industrial-scale behavioural management. And yet Westminster still behaves procedurally as though MPs were independent eighteenth-century gentlemen riding back from Westminster on horseback, carrying considered reflections for the good people of Bristol. They are not. They are merely components within heavily branded political machines.

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This is why public anger over defections, whip removals and leadership substitutions has intensified. Voters instinctively understand something the constitutional establishment remains reluctant to admit - the democratic contract has changed.

When an MP elected as Conservative defects to Labour, or vice versa, the electorate no longer experiences this as an honourable member exercising independent conscience.” They see it as “the political product I purchased has been altered after delivery.” That may sound vulgar, but modern politics itself invited the commercialisation of democratic identity. Having transformed politics into a highly sophisticated form of emotional mass marketing, they cannot then retreat behind Burkean theory the moment voters, in Amazon fashion, demand the right to return the goods.

Similarly, when MPs lose the whip, the public increasingly sees the constitutional absurdity of individuals continuing indefinitely under labels and affiliations which no longer exist in practical terms. The old parliamentary ambiguities made more sense when parties themselves were looser coalitions and MPs possessed greater independent standing. In the modern environment, party affiliation is central to electoral legitimacy. Most constituencies vote overwhelmingly along party lines rather than on personal familiarity with the local member. The electorate understands this perfectly well, even if constitutional theorists sometimes pretend otherwise.

But this argument becomes stronger still in relation to Prime Ministers.

For generations, the British establishment maintained the fiction that voters do not really elect Prime Ministers. Formally, this remains true. Functionally, it is nonsense. Modern General Elections revolve overwhelmingly around party leaders. Televised debates, media strategies, campaign messaging and political branding all reinforce presidential politics while simultaneously denying its constitutional implications. Surely you realised this when you watched - and some of you participated in - the sequence from Boris Johnson to Liz Truss to Rishi Sunak, which brutally exposed this contradiction. Profound changes in governing style, economic policy and political mandate occurred without any direct electoral endorsement. This wasn’t parliamentary democracy in action; it was a private members’ club, replacing The Chairman while the country waited outside in the rain.

The constitutional defence that the governing party retained Commons confidence is simply tosh because the voters no longer perceive parliamentary arithmetic as the only source of legitimacy; it must also involve a social licence within a media-saturated democratic culture. And media saturation changes everything.

Darling old Burke’s model and the world in which he lived gave everyone time for the shock waves from news of a plague, or a result from Waterloo, a Krakatoa, a Napoleonic victory, to be absorbed. That time cushion has been replaced by equipment in everyone’s hand, which instead generates permanent emotional acceleration. Bursts of outrage emerge hourly. Sobbing victims’ narratives mutate continuously within seconds of whatever atrocity.

AI-assisted political messaging will only intensify this phenomenon by enabling increasingly personalised persuasion at scale. We are nano-seconds away from an environment in which political actors will have the capacity to micro-target millions of voters with individually calibrated emotional narratives shaped by predictive behavioural modelling. At that point, holding onto Burke’s assumptions about representation becomes not merely outdated but structurally naïve.

The constitutional forms and the political reality have diverged too far, and on this point, Burke and I share the same track. As Burkes suggested, public opinion is volatile, often emotional, and frequently uninformed about the technical details that good lawmaking requires. A parliament that just mirrors the crowd isn’t deliberating — it’s just ratifying whatever mood happens to be dominant that week. You lose the very thing representative institutions were designed to provide.

Which is precisely why public legitimacy now requires clearer points of democratic renewal.

Automatic by-elections following major shifts in allegiance would acknowledge political reality. If MPs genuinely believe their constituents support the new alignment, they should have little fear of seeking renewed endorsement. Similarly, if a Prime Minister falls or is replaced amid a substantial political rupture, the electorate should be consulted directly rather than treated as passive spectators as internal party mechanisms rearrange national leadership.

Critics warn that this would increase instability. Perhaps they can’t count - but I would call seven Prime Ministers in ten years slightly unstable! What those nay-sayers are actually doing on each occasion is masking a legitimacy crisis as procedural continuity.

More and more, you hear people saying they don’t care, that their vote doesn’t make a difference. In effect, they’re democratically exhausted, and many are even institutionally cynical, with a growing belief that electoral mandates are simply convenient statements, to be forgotten after the Downing Street… “… and now we must get to work to build our great nation, together” Blah blah..

My fear is not the ludicrous maintenance of these clearly broken constitutional mechanics, but the decay of legitimacy and trust in a heavily manipulated democracy, which has to be changed

I’m sorry, dear hearts, but if I see another bloody article or hear some pan-european pseudo-intellectual glottal-stopping their way through a warning about Britain’s Far Right future, I shall scream.

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Britain in 2026 does not bear an uncanny resemblance to the dying days of the Weimar Republic, nor is Nigel Farage about to goose-step down Whitehall in his Barbour coat and Cording’s jacket. Nor can I see our Ange fleeing to Zurich in a biplane, clutching a F&M hamper containing the last bits of Treasury gold that the numpty Brown had missed when he sold our reserves for tuppence in the dollar.

Endless dinner parties and Sunday lunch conversations, see the Weimar comparison trotted out, less a serious historical analogy than a kind of compulsory middle-class moral aerobics. One must do it once a week, it seems, to reassure everyone within earshot that one has Read A Book and remains appropriately vigilant about The Lessons Of History. The fact that the book is usually half-remembered from sixth form is neither here nor there; the moment Isherwood, Baum or Friederich are mentioned, you know what’s coming next!

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Of course, Britain is in a foul temper. Of course, large parts of the electorate are angry, economically squeezed, institutionally distrustful and increasingly convinced that the managerial class could not organise a piss-up in the saloon bar of the Dog & Duck without first commissioning a McKinsey stakeholder review and accidentally deporting the darts team to Rwanda.

But the leap from “the country feels shabby and exhausted” to “this is literally Weimar Germany” requires a level of historical compression normally associated with Ryanair legroom. At the risk of teaching Grannies about egg sucking, or whatever, the Weimar Republic had - in no particular order: political assassinations, paramilitary street warfare, attempted putsches, hyperinflation that vaporised the savings of the middle class, and Communist uprisings. Yes, Germany had suffered national humiliation after a total military defeat - but other than an inability to send a half-refurbished destroyer to Cyprus, I don’t really see the comparison. Yes, they had armed nationalist militias on the street and in various “centres” - and maybe there are some areas of Birmingham where there is a Club full of angry Pakistani young men who have got themselves three crossbows and a couple of Jason Statham combat knives. But that really doesn’t count. At a pinch, I might also accept that there may well be some loony elitists who believe they could domesticate extremists for their own purposes.

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The deeper problem is that “Weimar” has ceased to mean anything precise. It is now simply a shorthand for “a political atmosphere I personally find alarming and struggle to understand.”

Immigration controls? Weimar. Populism? Weimar. People being rude about NGOs on GB News? Weimar. Somebody from Kent saying they preferred it before every market town acquired seventeen vape shops and a Turkish barber called Bladez Elite? Practically the Beer Hall Putsch.

This does not mean there are no dangers in modern Britain. Democracies absolutely can decay through sheer institutional exhaustion, laziness and ineptitude. That decay is hastened through the sheer incompetence of the political elite and the gradual normalisation of ugliness - and I mean that in the sense of things we simply find “ugly”. Bad manners, lack of courtesy, unsympathetic public services, and perhaps a failure to see any other perspective. Everyone is wrong, apart from…

The process that sees a grotesque in charge is usually far less cinematic than the chattering classes imagine. Most national decline does not arrive in jackboots. It arrives in the form of managed decline, procedural sclerosis and railway replacement buses. Britain’s present condition looks less like 1932 Berlin than a tired, ageing post-imperial democracy running on administrative fumes and culture-war stimulants while everybody involved pretends that another white paper, another inquiry or another reshuffle might somehow reverse forty years of structural drift.

Which is depressing enough without dragging the ghost of Weimar into every bloody column.

Weimar Bratwürste mit Sallys1 Kartoffeln

Mea maxima Culpa - I have not given you a recipe lately, and so here, and in the context of a jolly evening at home in Schnitzel Strausse, is my idea of heaven if you’re wearing your lederhosen.

You can buy Saurkraut, and much of it is OK’ish, but it is much more fulfilling to make your own, AND I don't know a chap who doesn't like a new piece of kitchen kit.

What you need is the wherewithal to do lacto-fermentation or pickling. In order for it to work, you do need to make sure that the (in this case) cabbage is kept submerged in its own self-produced brine. Now Granny did it her way, and my mother probably did it another way - but this kit is the thing! See it HERE. Yes, Amazon will have other Mason jars and pickling kits - but this is the one for me. Whatever you choose, here are the principles involved in making your own Sauerkraut.

Ingredients

• 1 medium head of green cabbage (about 1kg)

• 1.5 to 2 tbsp sea salt (ensure it is non-iodised, as iodine can inhibit fermentation)

• Optional: 1 tsp caraway seeds or juniper berries for that traditional Bavarian kick.

Instructions

1. Keep the outer leaves. Quarter the cabbage and remove the core. Slice the cabbage into very thin ribbons.

2. Place cabbage in a large bowl and sprinkle with salt. Massage the cabbage with your hands for about 10 minutes. You’ll know you’re done when the cabbage is limp and has released a significant amount of liquid (brine).

3. Stuff the cabbage into a clean glass mason jar. Press down firmly with your fist or a wooden spoon to remove air bubbles. The brine should rise above the level of the cabbage.

4. Use the reserved outer cabbage leaves to place over the top of the mix to keep it down, adding a weight if necessary. Cover with a lid, but do not seal tightly (allow gases to escape). If it comes into contact with air, it can mould.

5. Cover with a cloth or a loose lid. Let it sit at room temperature out of direct sunlight.

6. Start tasting after 7 days. For a deep, complex tang, let it go for 3-4 weeks. Once you love the flavour, put a lid on it and refrigerate it.

7. If your fermenting sauerkraut ever smells “rotten” or looks slimy/pink, chuck it. It should smell pleasantly sour and vinegary, like a deli.

Now to the bangers: You want Bratwurst for these - a good place to find really excellent, authentic German bangers are The Sausage Man or The Sausage Haus. Get more than you need - especially with summer coming and the BBQ lurching into view!

Ingredients:

• 4-6 high-quality German sausages (Bratwurst, Knackwurst, or Weisswurst).

• 300 gms of your homemade sauerkraut (drained).

• 1 onion, thinly sliced.

• 175 ml Dry Riesling or a light German lager.

• 1 tbsp butter or oil.

• 1 tsp sugar (optional, to balance the acidity).

Instructions:

1. In a large saute pan with a lid over medium heat, add the butter/oil and brown the sausages on all sides until golden. They don’t need to be cooked through yet. Remove and set aside.

2. In the same pan, sauté the onions until soft and translucent.

3. Add the sauerkraut and the wine (or beer). Scrape the bottom of the pan to get all those flavorful brown bits. Stir in the sugar if using.

4. Nestled the sausages back into the bed of sauerkraut. Cover the pan, turn the heat to low, and simmer for 10–15 minutes. This allows the sausages to finish cooking while the kraut absorbs the fat and juices.

5. Personally, I prefer this served with slightly overcooked cut-up spuds that are slightly crushed - not mashed - just wounded. Masses of butter and toss through some chives. Some prefer baby new potatoes. Some chips or even potato cakes. Whatever you do, you need a large dollop of sharp German mustard and possibly even a soft pretzel.

A day of Lummes and crikeys!

Firstly and most importantly, Sunday’s Plumpton meeting has been called off due to a confirmed case of Equine Influenza and EHV-4 in an unvaccinated non-thoroughbred horse based at a livery yard adjacent to the racecourse. The infected horse, which remains isolated at the livery yard, has undergone further testing and is still actively shedding the virus. The BHA issued a release in late April, asking licensed professionals to be extra vigilant regarding biosecurity. Everyone with horses in their care, vaccinated or not, should look out for the signs of infection, which may include a raised temperature, a harsh cough or nasal discharge. Any of these signs should be investigated promptly by a vet. Equine influenza is highly contagious and can be transmitted via the air over reasonable distances, as well as indirectly, including via people.

Rupert Lowe’s Restore Britain has had a 100% strike rate for its candidates in the council elections and has taken all ten seats in Great Yarmouth. A RB spokesperson who had patently learned their comms skills at the Murmansk School of Pravda Understatement said: “Today, the voters of Great Yarmouth delivered a landslide. This is just the beginning.”

David Gauke, who was a loathsome and extraordinarily pompous man when I met him twice at relatively off-piste engagements (i.e., little public scrutiny), has fulfilled all his Tory ideological promises and been knighted by Starmer. From the day the Brexit decision was made, Gauke worked assiduously to block, hinder, and obfuscate every attempt to implement that democratic result. In June 2019, Gauke survived a no-confidence vote by his local Conservative association, which was triggered by his opposition to a “no-deal” Brexit. Gauke then had the Conservative whip removed on 3 September 2019 and sat as an independent MP, a move that was a point of tension for some traditional Conservative voters in his constituency. Sir David’s reward is, if nothing else, appropriate!

I think I have found Your Party’s council election candidate - it’s surprising how much time one can waste on a meaningless quest, and I do mean one - some chap called John Warmisham who got 1.9% of the votes or 66 as it is known near Salford.

Apparently, we welcomed the 200.000th small boat since 2018 this morning… but who is counting? Is there a man in a tin helmet with a pair of naval binoculars perched on the cliffs with a pair of German Carl Zeiss 12x60 “Flak” Binoculars? “Broadsword to Danny Boy - Broadsword to Danny Boy. That’s number two zero zero zero zero zero zero one” No, I said two zero zero zero zero zero zero one, not two zero zero zero zero zero zero zero one! Out.”

As an aside, and only you gentle readers, Sir Peter O’Sullevan and the Late Queen Mum know this - but the actual bronze Sir POS annual award is not in fact based on his racing binoculars. He tended to use some huge monsters that had been placed in the commentator's position, or his own, a rather nice pair of standard-sized, but very well-engineered bins. When we were designing the award, I suggested we needed something that looked like it might have some heft in the sight department. The solution was to use the binoculars of Dorian (who was working with me at the time), Manville-Hales’ grandfather, which had been liberated from a U-Boat captain during the war. They were sculpted by Janie Beardsall, the brilliantly talented sculptress and wife of the mad hatter Jonny.

Talking of Crikey and Lumme, I once carried something of a small lustful adolescent flame for Sally Field, who just had (in my sad mind) the look of a secret and dangerous romper. She was, of course, always a good actress, and as she has matured, she has gone from strength to strength, now with a charm that is very bankable.

Anyway, she has popped up in Pop Culture’s ongoing and bizarrely intense obsession with the Octopus. It all started - what didn't?- in Lockdown, when a Netflix documentary about a man and his borderline-unhealthy fixation on an octopus started getting likes. The global reach of My Octopus Teacher also inevitably led to some truly strange cultural moments. At its peak, the internet was flooded with people asking deeply uncomfortable questions about just how “intimate” that human-mollusc bond really was.

Side note and to save Google and your rep: there was nil sex - it was platonic. Secondly, yes, it is a mollusc! Even though they don’t have a hard outer shell like snails or clams, octopuses belong to the phylum Mollusca. They are specifically classified as cephalopod molluscs, a group that includes squid, cuttlefish, and the shelled nautilus.

Despite the awkwardness, the documentary became a massive phenomenon, essentially rebranding the octopus from a seafood staple to a spiritual life coach.

This obsession paved the way for the 2022 bestseller Remarkably Bright Creatures by Shelby Van Pelt. The novel, which hinges on the bond between an elderly cleaner and a grumpy giant Pacific octopus, gave readers exactly what they were apparently still yearning for: a heartwarming connection with a cephalopod, but in the form of a “gentle summer read” where no one had to worry about the “creepy” undertones of the original documentary.

Now, the cycle is completing itself. The book’s adaptation is soon to be on Netflix, with Sally Field in the female lead, and possibly and very bewilderingly, ensuring that the “inspiring octopus” is likely to be used for at least eighteen months as the heart of a dozen pitches and streaming algorithms.

“It’s about two families that hate each other, you say. They fight. One of them kills one of the other family members, and now the young lovers are doomed. It all ends badly, with suicide, priests, nurses, grandees, princes, and foreign lands. But I can’t see any octopus in it. Nah, sorry Will, it won’t work without the Octopus! Give me a squid even, and you can have as many capulets as you like”

Talking of wishing for eight arms to carry all our winnings home from today’s racing and then realising that only happens in fiction, here are my thoughts on the racing.

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I’m not for a moment suggesting that Sadiq Khan is the most dangerous politician in the UK, because there are others, but in influential terms, he is one who needs to be very carefully watched. Soon, he will be going across the water to the Other Place and his vision of His Truth, where I predict he will do more harm to the nation.

My eyes are once again taken by Khan’s familiar political Trompe l’Oeil, a campaign for the public good, based on specially commissioned research to support his latest “Pro Bono” policy, in this case demanding wide-reaching internet censorship. At a speech in Cambridge last month, he demanded the creation of “a new central body” to fight online disinformation. In support of this demand was research claiming there has been a 350% rise in migration-related narratives and a 150–200% increase in “London in decline” content on X. The only trouble is that we have no idea which communication and mapping tools were used, nor which Boolean keyword searches were used to generate the unprovable statistics. We have no idea how the report decided which social media accounts were labelled as part of a “coordinated” or “inauthentic” politically motivated activity. What criteria did they use?

The report claims that “London in decline” narratives rose by 150–200%, while overall London-related X postings rose only 7%. But from what base? If I tip one winner in 600 selections (I am allegedly marginally better), and then tip 3 winners in the next 400, my success rate has gone up 350%! The fact that the numbers are statistical noise doesn’t alter the facts. Similarly, the report says

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I’ve been trying to avoid saying it, or even talking about it, but we’re reaching a point in time when it looks as though I might have been right all along. So just to be certain you get it, and hopefully for the last time, let me repeat myself.

Racing is facing a major, possibly cataclysmic, schism that will,

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My head sinks further on my chest. The grinning gap-toothed jackanape that assures us he can enlarge breasts, works for the Red Cross, is concerned by police brutality, but not about UK citizens who happen to be Jewish; who is a liar and the very worst type of opportunistic wannabe, who portrays himself as a public servant and hates the public… is coming to power.

Why? Because the incumbents and the previous administrations for the past twenty years have played fast and loose with the very concept of public service and civic duty. They have led the masses to the point where they have so little hope for the future of this country that they actually consider this guy might do some good!

How ghastly, and worse is to come, because soon we will have proportional representation, not this week but in the next three years, and it will turn England into another European swamp, with no money, no possessions, no future, no heritage… sans everything.

Trust me, in five years’ time, Venezuela will be a comparative paradise.

Sorry, had to let my primaeval scream out.

Meanwhile, I saw a rabbit on the lawn today. The rabbit is unaware at this stage of his life that we have four pairs of Red Kites locally, fed, I discovered the other day, by a retired trainer on chicken wings he buys at the local market on a Friday. He is allegedly trying to train them to eat from his hand whilst he lies in a hot tub. The image is so bizarre that I would pay money to see it.

The rabbit, for some reason,

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A non-runner and Tote rules, where the stake goes on the favourite, saw us hose into a decent Trifecta in the 2000 Gns. Punchestown was less of a disaster, but I need time to reflect on why I was having such trouble picking winners in a one-horse race where the winner had already been crowned.

Such is life. Short today - off for drinks - then lunch - then something else - then….

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I was minded last night, as I watched the Miami GP Sprint Pole qualies, of the leadership battle currently being silently waged behind closed doors.

At Miami, the clock had started for Q1, and nothing moved. No cars appeared, and after a couple of “nil-action” minutes, even the commentators were getting bewildered. Then suddenly out into the pit lane and…

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The drums are beating over at Labour’s Disaster Centre, and whilst they haven’t quite got to sending out children dressed in white and with red-ribboned hair to hand out Labour lapel Pins, whilst singing We’ll Keep the Red Flag Flying Here - the panic is on.

The Queen Across the Water, Angela Rayner and the King of the North, Andy Burnham, have been seen on the doorsteps of Southwark, and Lucy Powell, too, is out door-stepping tonight. For Angela, it is a case of proving her worth to The PLP, especially those in the Anyone-But-Ange faction of the forthcoming New New New Labour PM. For Andy, canvassing in London keeps him in the thick of it, so he can continue his campaign to swap jobs with a sitting MP who hates Starmer.

The canvassing isn't too onerous because, at the moment, the tactics to save London from the Greens

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I am spending too much time in the quieter moments trying to get my head around two statements I heard the other day.

Ideology has replaced Morality.

The Rule of Law depends on the Consent of the People.

In very simple terms, both are apropos to many of the news stories of the past couple of months. The self-righteous cant of the weak and useless PM; the posturing of Miliband’s pointless and illogical justifications for his actions and policies; the constant half-truths and dissembling of every political party and every politician’s belief from town hall to Downing Street that they are an intellectual elite and that the public is stupid. Thus, every news story supports the first statement.

The second statement was most evident on Thursday night, with further exposés of how the average town high street is now awash with

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Around the country at this morning’s breakfast tables, all that could be heard was the sounds of forehead slapping, of collapsing stout parties, of hurrumphs of such volume that Labradors bolted for the boot room and Cockers headed for a warm Aga.

Not for the first time this month, The Torygraph had made another typo - but this was manifestly the worst possible error

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