Brexit - Farming, Planning - BustardsThis week I was credited (ok, partly credited) with the UK leaving the EU (see here by David Frost, our chief Brexit negotiator in 2019-20). This will confirm some readers’ dim view of me, but I was highly gratified.
ChinaSir Henry Keswick - the quintessential taipan, chairman of Jardine Matheson, life-long Sinophile and deeply Conservative Englishman - died this month. He and his wife Tessa (who died last year) were good friends to me and to my Party here in East Wiltshire over many years.
Last week in the Commons (see here) I did what I could on behalf of the Opposition to challenge the Government on the withdrawal of the Winter Fuel Payment from 10 million pensioners.
Military familiesThere are encouraging hints in the papers today that the Government will offer military families a reprieve from the planned taxation on education.
I spent Friday and Saturday this week in Larkhill, the military town. One thing dominates local conversation here: the hundreds of Afghan nationals relocated here, and to neighbouring towns, since the fall of Kabul to the Taliban.
Tory Party Conference is over; thank goodness. It was a curiously, almost hysterically, upbeat week - curious, for my party has not been happy for some years. We usually have a leader that lots of people grumble about.
I write from Birmingham, where the Conservative Party is gathering for its annual Conference which this year is a beauty parade of leadership contenders. More on that in a moment.Our area is rich in activity and poor in connections.
Parliament is in recess, for the Party Conferences. Ed Davey, of the Liberal Democrats, has endeared himself to me with his relentless absurdity; I honour him for his persistence in performing water-based stunts for the cameras.
