Nightmare on Downing Street as poll hots up
This Thursday will be May 4, which is significant for two, not very exciting things.
To some of you, it will be notable as the day the people of Shropshire district go to the polls in the local council elections.
To others, it is the day when people with a predilection towards waterproof clothing will send each other the greeting "Happy Star Wars Day. May the fourth be with you." Geddit?
Anyway, back to politics, and it was Prime Minister Theresa May who this week found herself accused of living in a galaxy far, far away by president of the EU Commission, Jean-Claude Juncker.
It emerged that Mr Juncker, or Drunker as he is known in certain tabloids because of his alleged tendency to eat, drink, and get very merry, attended a dinner in Downing Street with Mrs May last week and, let's just say, things didn't go quite according to plan.
Lichfield Conservative MP Michael Fabricant likened the meeting to "two stags pounding the earth and snorting at each other."
Who wouldn't have paid to be a fly on the wall for that?
However, I can't help but imagine it as being more like the scene from the Charlie Chaplin film, The Great Dictator, where despots Adenoid Hynkel and Benzino Napaloni host a peace summit, and end up having a food fight. Isn't there something just so delicious about the thought of Mr Juncker and Mrs May hurling potatoes and spaghetti at one another, as they brawl about tariff-free borders and the cost of treaty obligations? I wouldn't give much to Mr Juncker's chances.
Continuing the movie theme, Tony Blair also announced that he was considering a return to politics, some 20 years after becoming prime minister, and a decade after his retirement. Zombie Apocalypse or Blair Witch Project are the obvious candidates, but I would say the dreadful Bond film Never Say Never Again would be the best fit, when an ageing Sean Connery decides to reprise his role after 12 years in the wilderness, only to have become something of a parody of himself.
He kicked off his comeback tour by predicting that at some stage in the future Britain will want to rejoin the European Union. To give his prediction a bit of gravitas, he opted to back it up with a football analogy: "The single market put us in the Champions League of trading agreements. A free trade agreement is like League One. We are relegating ourselves," he said, scoffing a half-time pie and a mug of Bovril.
"Carry on like this, and we will all be as sick as a parrot. Come the summer, there needs to be a total clear-out, Theresa May has got to go now."
