The US ambassador to London, the Democratic Party fundraiser Matthew Barzun, likes to tell of how he learned a few words of Welsh in the lead-up to the 2014 Nato summit in Newport, only to find that the locals spoke English. Dafydd Cameron took a different route on a recent foray to lecture the Welsh Tories in Cardiff. A copy of the speech he delivered was punctuated by phonetic translations. He was advised to say that the Wales minister Alun Cairns is from “Ysgol [pronounced Usgol] Pontardawe” and that he’d tell Labour’s Stephen Kinnock “da iawn” [pronounced “dye yown”, meaning “very good”] on 7 May when he comes second to the Tory candidate for Aberavon, the China-born “Edward Yi He [pronounced Yee Hay]”. Labour used to do the same with the word-mangling John Prescott after he stumbled over Slobodan Milosevic.
Disloyal of Danny Alexander to exclude Nick Clegg from Talk of the Glens, the eight-page glossy magazine given out to his Highlands constituents. There’s a recipe for Danny’s sausage and butternut squash stew, a crossword, an approving reference to Harriet Harman’s “ginger rodent” gibe, photos galore and an interview with his dad, Di, a former fireman. But no mention of Clegg. Indeed, all references to the Lib Dems are restricted to the back page. It seems the man who styles himself “Our Champion” is going it alone. Danny will have only himself to blame if he loses.
The Great British Battleaxe, Christine Hamilton, is selling cereal bars. Christine will soon appear on television fronting an ad campaign for the weight-loss range Slim-Be. The larger-than-life (though she claims to have dropped a dress size by eating what she’s flogging) Tory-turned-Ukip activist is, like her husband, Neil, the ex-MP, increasingly disillusioned with the Purple Shirts. Farage made it clear there’s room for a solitary ego in the party and his own is insatiable. At the rate the party is falling in the polls, it could yet win Political Slimmer of the Year.
To Leeds, and Morley’s magnificent, colonnaded old town hall. The Grade I-listed Victorian masterpiece boasts a bust of Herbert Asquith, a local lad who for eight years in the Edwardian era was Liberal prime minister. The current MP is Ed Balls. A copy of his notorious tweet (of his own name) was auctioned for £250. The fundraiser was split with Dewsbury, where Labour’s Paula Sherriff (younger sister of Lee Sherriff, standing in Carlisle) hopes to overturn the Tory barrister Simon Reevell’s vulnerable 1,526 majority. The talk in Dewsbury Labour ranks was of a Conservative action day to flood the former mill town’s streets with activists. They couldn’t fill a taxi.
From breakfast TV to culture secretary? That’s the word on Gloria De Piero if Labour wins the election.
Kevin Maguire is the associate editor (politics) of the Daily Mirror
Content from our partners
Related
