Mark Andrews: 'Daddy' Trump, Kemi's secret hope, and the scandal of Michael Gove's pyjamas
After days of speculation about how much damage the US airstrikes actually caused to Iran's nuclear capabilities, Iran has now 'admitted' it was severe.
Cue the head of Nato, Mark Rutte hailing 'Daddy' Don as a 'man of strength and peace' for his handling of the affair.
Maybe it's just me, but I find it slightly un-nerving when the man in charge of the world's largest military force, who is ultimately responsible for the safety of everybody in this country, refers to the worryingly flakey US president as 'Daddy'.
And maybe I'm looking at this through a glass half-empty perspective, and hopefully the far-more-clever folk than I will tell me I've got this wrong. But if you're leading a besieged, despotic regime whose nuclear arsenal has just narrowly escaped obliteration, might you not overstate the damage in the hope they will leave you alone - and buy a bit of time to regroup and rebuild?
I don't want to put a damper on this bromance, but has it occurred to Mr Rutte and his Daddy that the Iranians might be, well, how shall I put this, er, lying?
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Meanwhile, Daddy himself has likened his attack on Fordow to the bombing of Hiroshima in 1945.
The attack on Hiroshima brought a swift end to the Second World War, led to the rapid surrender of Japan, which reinvented itself as a liberal democracy. Whereas the airstrikes on Iran? OK, sorry, didn't mean to split hairs.
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Drawing parallels between her first months as Conservative leader and Margaret Thatcher's faltering start to the Conservative Party leadership, suggesting that flamboyant Liberal leader Jeremy Thorpe appeared to pose similar challenges to her predecessor as Nigel Farage does today.
“He was a genuine threat until that thing with the dog happened,” she observed.
I'm not sure that is an entirely wise comparison. That 'thing with the dog' came after Thorpe allegedly (he was later cleared) hired an incompetent hitman to murder his alleged gay lover, who missed the target and killed his great dane instead. Now if your best hope of reaching Downing Street involves a similar thing happening again, it probably isn't best to talk about it.
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Never underestimate the venom of the scorned politician's wife. In her memoir, out this week, Sarah Vine, former wife of Michael Gove, reveals how her ex-husband was partial to 'hour-long baths in the chalet, reading Paradise Lost and emerging, pink and smiling, in his pastel lavender Hackett dressing gown and matching pyjamas, smelling of Clarins Blue Bath'.
She divorced him in 2022 for 'unreasonable behaviour'. No kidding.
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Meanwhile one wag has suggested that maybe Sir Keir Starmer could learn a few lessons from the way the Israeli government swiftly dispatched Greta Thunberg when it comes to securing Britain's borders.
"She arrived on a boat, was sent back on a plane. Got it Keir?"
