Is Britain broken? No, but listening to that little shit Jenrick you’d think it was
Is Britain really broken? It's certainly not at its best but when was it truly great? In the days of imperialism when we owned half the world and relied on slaves to make us rich? Hardly, and not just because of the moral issue. At home, disease was rife because of open sewers. Child labour was the norm and almost everybody but the landed gentry and the rich middle class of factory owners lived in utter squalor. And life expectancy was just 40.
How about the 1950s? Better of course, and after a century that's hardly surprising. But we were still a very class-ridden society, we were an industrial economy with almost full employment but low wages. The greatest advance was the NHS, introduced in 1948, the same year that the Education Act brought in grammar schools. Most of us expected to live to nearly 70.
But now when we can all enjoy foreign travel, a choice of food from every continent in most of our towns, more TV channels than we could ever watch (or would want to), safe, economical cars, technology that few over the age of 15 can understand and mind- boggling medical advances…and the place is broken?
Of-course it isn't and the fact that he says it, tells us everything about that awful little shit Robert Jenrick. Has there ever been a more transparent chancer than him? The man who makes ambition look like a notifiable disease, the 'new sheriff' in Mayor Farage's Spivsville. He tries to justify his defection to Reform in a self-serving, see-through piece in yesterday's Times and you'd need a heart of stone not to laugh. He sets out a charge sheet which includes flat-lining wages, non-working public services, NHS waiting lists and an economy which hasn't worked since 2007.
In other words, four days after having to jump ship fast when Kemi Badenoch sacked him, he blames his old party for all but four years of the current woes of this country. Fortunately, readers of The Times are not easily taken in and I suspect his piece was given space knowing their comments would reflect that. They did not disappoint: as I write this there have been more than 1200 comments and, so you don't have to, I've read the first 50, not one of which is in agreement. "The Times does satire well", said one, and another reminded us (as if we needed it) of what this snake of a man is capable of with "Don't forget the Dirty Desmond planning scandal".
In the same edition that brilliant columnist, decent Tory and all-round proper human being Matthew Parris likens the rush from the Conservative Party to Reform to the Gadarene swine and for good measure says that one of their number, Danny Kruger, is the "simple person's idea of an intellectual". Actually Parris is worth quoting further; Boris Johnson is "Raffles without the cunning, a poster boy for careless moral turpitude" though he lets off the loony Truss with "away with the faries".
The truth is Britain is not broken though it is clear the quality of many of our MPs is, as is our immigration system. We have a wooden prime minister who clearly makes decisions before working out the consequences, a chancellor who can't do sums and few who shine apart from Streeting, Healey and Mahmood. The Tories are no better off with one notable exception. Mrs Badenoch improves by the day and acted swiftly and decisively over the vain little sheriff. She now has the opportunity to make her party electable and hold the middle ground once again. A One Nation party, yes please.
It is the US which is broken in every respect. Trump is clearly insane, dangerously so, and thinks everything can be bought including the Nobel Peace Prize. Gaza is now a redevelopment opportunity with him as chairman for life. He has invited his pal Putin to join the board along with the rotten-to-the-core Belarus dictator Lukashenko. Fine company for Tony Blair. As for Greenland, it’s just another land grab, Forget its strategic importance, it’s full of those rare earth minerals just as Venezuela has all that oil. Money!
At home he runs the security services and judiciary as a Mafia gangster with no accountability. When a country is like that, with a petty, spiteful sick thug as president, then it really is broken. Maybe one day soon Sheriff Bobby J will find his real home there.
*****
Much has been written of Hamnet and what a tear-jerker it is. Neither of us has read Maggie O’Farrell’s much acclaimed novel so knew little of the storyline other than it centred on the death of Shakespeare’s 10-year-old son Hamnet. All of which is correct. We didn’t cry even though I can be a bit of a blubber if the mood takes me. But that didn’t take away from the brilliance of a film which has extraordinary performances from Paul Mescal as the Bard, Noah Jupe as his son and Jessie Buckley who mesmerises throughout as Anne (known as Agnes) Hathaway.
The film belongs to Buckley; I never once doubted her grief when her son died of (we are led to presume) bubonic plague or indeed when she is left alone, with Will mostly away in London seeking his fortune. She beguiles throughout, never over-acting, and there is an ethereal quality to her. The filmography is magnificent, contrasting the beauty of the Forest of Arden with the bleakness of Thames-side and the building of the Globe.
There is never a hint that both Buckley (Killarney) or Mescal (Kildare) are Irish and surely Buckley is a cert for a Best Acting Oscar. Indeed it is very much a movie of great Irish talent: O’Farrell (Co Derry) not only wrote the book but co-wrote the screenplay.
All the world really is a stage…
*****
I much enjoyed Dick Dismore’s history of William Hickey from the real man, quite a ne’er do well, to those who have inhabited the Diary named after him. A few ne’er do wells among that particular cast as well. The old rascal died in 1728 and is buried is Richmond in St Mary Magdalene churchyard.
One of the best Hickey editors was my great friend Wislon who calls me on my diamanté encrusted iPhone to tell me that the peerage for Richard (Darling Dickie) was actually meant for his brother David, my dream dinner party guest. The recommendation came up as D Attenborough and some luvvie assumed it was for Dickie.
Dismore also wrote of his recent fall and the sheer embarrassment of it. I once took a tumble in Amsterdam (and no it wasn’t because of what you think) but nothing could beat my predicament on my birthday last June when we went to the excellent Richmond Theatre for a revival of Drop the Dead Donkey and feeling thirsty afterwards headed to a pub. That meant crossing the road and squeezing through some railings.
Not a good call: I got stuck hard between two of the bloody things and simply couldn’t extract myself. Panic was setting in and for once she didn’t take the inevitable pictures. After a few excruciatingly embarrassing minutes I was rescued by two large chaps who refused my offer of a drink (which I so badly needed).
*****
When Jean Rook interviewed President Reagan for the Express we made quite a thing of it, and rightly so. A big blurb on Page One and a show over three pages inside. What a surprise then that 40 years later when the excellent Robert Hardman scooped everyone by spending two days for the Mail at Mar-a-Lago with Trump, there was no blurb and we had to get to P24 to read about the encounter.
The Front Page was made up of a splash knocking Labour (no change there), a cross ref to a piece about the Traitors and a huge blurb to ‘a vital book by an alcohol coach’ (me neither, except I know I don’t need coaching thank you).
What is going on in Derry St?
*****
Obits in the The Times can be a joy but yesterday’s account of the life of Sir John Blofeld, High Court judge and brother of dear old Henry, Blowers to you and me, was especially brilliant. We learned that he was born in the night nursery of the grand family pile, Hoveton House in Norfolk, and died age 93 in the day nursery, as if every home has them.
Best of all, when he was junior to Sir Michael Havers in the defence of Mick Jagger and Marianne Faithful on drug charges in 1969 the pair thought it only right and proper that they should try a puff or two, all in the interests of justice, you understand. So they went to the Met’s little stash and lit up. His son Tom said: “Dad claimed he didn’t like it but Havers thought it rather good”.
I particularly like the “he claimed”!
ALAN FRAME
20 January 2026
