David Behrens

Finally, Michael Gove was right about something. With no seat to lose and nothing at stake next week, the outgoing MP for Surrey Heath rounded on party colleagues for placing bets on an election date they already knew. It was as bad as Partygate, he said: one rule for them, another for us.

It took seven of the country’s most senior judges this week to finally turn the tide against the water companies. It was something ministers and regulators had signally failed to do and the timing, two days before the polling stations opened, foretold the political sea-change that would surely follow.

Sir Keir Starmer’s first speech on the steps of Downing Street contained so much rhetoric about rebuilding trust that few even noticed the single detail that will set his administration apart from Labour’s last time in office.

As the former and soon-to-be-again president of the USA flaunted his bandaged ear in front of cheering hordes at the Republican National Convention on Tuesday, our own heads of state were bestowing royal patronage on a goat. If ever a single day embodied the differences in our diverged cultures, this was it.

Perhaps you remember the chaos at your local surgery when the computer system that handles your appointments and medical records crashed. It was days before any semblance of normality returned and while the techies scratched their heads, your chances of seeing an actual medic disappeared into the distance.

I’m not one to gossip but have you heard what everyone’s saying? In a sentence like that, the word ‘but’ is doing a lot of heavy lifting. It’s nearly always a warning that the second half of the statement will directly contradict the first. We’ve seen that a lot this week.

Fame is a powerful drug. Many crave it, some who have it wish they could give it back – and a few people who aren’t famous at all make the mistake of thinking they are. One such nonentity asked an officer at Hull Prison this week if they wanted his autograph. “I’m famous,” he apparently said. “I’m all over social media.”

WHOSE side is the new government on? Certainly not the side of pensioners. Or working people who have to take the train to get there. That’s a big chunk of society to have alienated so soon; no wonder 52 per cent of us think the nation is heading in the wrong direction.

They’re recording the new series of Strictly Come Dancing next Wednesday in the BBC studios at Elstree. But the moves on the dance floor won’t hold a candle to those at the industrial tribunal that will surely follow.

I would like to think that if I’d met John Lennon at the height of Beatlemania I would have come away with at least a story to tell my grandchildren. But they do say that if you remember the Sixties you weren’t really there.