HARD to believe, I know, but there are people in this country who think this Labour Government is dangerously right wing.
“We are here to replace you,” Zack Polanski informed Labour when he became leader of the Greens last year.
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Fighting talk! But is Zack all snaggle-tooth mouth and baggy trousers?
We are about to find out.
Sir Keir Starmer has abruptly quit as an MP, flouncing off into the sunset to concentrate on “international affairs” and prompting an unexpected by-election in his old seat of Holborn & St Pancras.
Announcing that he would stand as the Green candidate — if selected by his party, and Zack’s in huge trouble if he is not selected — Polanski says the by-election will be “a referendum on ending rip-off Britain”.
To some of us, Zack has always looked like the Right Honourable Member for Cloud Cuckoo Land, so obsessed with all the predictable left-wing causes that he didn’t seem to have a word to say about global warming — even during the hottest summer in history.
But there is undoubtedly a market for this crap.
There are voters out there who genuinely believe that the big fault with this tax-and-spend socialist government is that, er, it just doesn’t tax and spend enough.
But are there enough of them to change the political weather?
The Greens certainly hurt Labour in May’s local elections.
And back in February they won the Gorton and Denton by-election — the first Green seat in the north of England — rallying the anti-Reform vote and pushing Labour into third place. King of the North, Andy?
Not even in your back yard. Starmer’s old seat is the best chance yet for the Greens to prove they are a true political power — the Reform UK of the left.
Wild-eyed rebels who are capable of reaping enough votes to obliterate the old two-party system forever. Insurgents fronted by a dentally challenged, far-left Farage.
But if Labour win in Holborn & St Pancras, then Zack Polanski will look like just another loopy loon who really should have stayed in the student union bar.
And the Andy Burnham bounce, the rise in the polls Labour got after kicking out Keir, will look springier than ever.
Holborn & St Pancras is the Prime Minister’s first real test of his grasp on power.
And it could truly go either way.
“Too often Labour has stood up for corporations and big money,” Zack Polanski proclaimed, confirming he would be standing in Starmer’s old seat.
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“I will stand up for people struggling to pay their bills.”
In the end, isn’t that what voters care about?
“I am ready to pass the baton,” Starmer said, jacking it in just a few weeks after swearing that he was going to remain a sitting MP.
With the final U-turn of a career that was comically full of them, Starmer may have set up his successor for a kicking that he will never recover from.
Passing the baton, Keir?
More like sticking your baton right where Ed Miliband’s solar panels don’t shine.
More like handing your treacherous comrades a poisoned chalice.
ARE REFERENDUMS WORTH IT? I VOTE NO
REFORM chairman Lee Anderson reckons we should have a referendum on the death penalty.
“This is how out of touch I think Parliament is,” says Lee.
“I think the public would vote for the death penalty. Parliament would never vote for the death penalty.”
But here is the problem with referendums, Lee – they NEVER work.
Because referendums inflame the losing side.
Do we honestly believe that the 2014 Scottish independence referendum settled the issue forever?
After losing the referendum, the Scottish Nationalists were energised and enthused as never before.
Only last week – last week! – the Scottish government published a draft Referendum Bill asking, “Should Scotland be an independent country? Yes or No?”
So what exactly was settled in the 2014 referendum? Nothing.
And so it was with the EU referendum in 2016.
The Remainers lost on a final score of 16million to 17.4million – but nothing was truly resolved.
Yes, we voted to leave the European Union but suddenly, and for YEARS, those hideous blue flags with the gold stars were everywhere from Parliament Square to the Last Night of the Proms.
If he lasts that long, Andy Burnham will have his best chance of winning the next General Election simply by stating that this country should start talking about rejoining the EU – as if 2016 never happened.
Referendums turn democracy into a penalty shoot-out.
And in the end they decide NOTHING.
SOFTLY DOES IT, HEROES
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SOMEONE needs a hug! And apparently it is the new generation of Hollywood leading men.
This year’s Vanity Fair Hollywood special celebrates a major shift in what the modern male star looks like. Hard men are out. Soft lads are in.
“Meet the new class of leading men,” sighs the magazine. “They’re still fantasy men, yes – but boyfriend shaped. Accessible, kind, vulnerable and recognisably human.”
When you look at the new crop of leading men, Vanity Fair’s soft-boy theory seems to hold up.
Tom Holland is 30 but, in The Odyssey, he looks like he hasn’t started shaving.
And Tom boasts that off screen he “loves” crocheting with his wife Zendaya – not a pastime you can imagine John Wayne, Clint Eastwood or Sylvester Stallone proudly fessing up to.
Timothee Chalamet, 30, was totally believable as the painfully sensitive young Bob Dylan in A Complete Unknown.
“Maybe in cinema we are moving away from the traditional alpha leading male characters,” muses Paul Mescal, star of Gladiator and Hamnet.
Maybe.
But I have two words for those who think Hollywood has totally replaced tough guys with soft boys.
LEO WOODALL. Watch Woodall in Tony, the Anthony Bourdain biopic and you will believe you are witnessing the new Marlon Brando.
Leo tears up the screen with old-school macho mayhem.
He can play sensitive – see One Day – but in Tony, he gives an Oscar-deserving performance as a two-fisted, sex-crazed, drug-crazed wild man.
The testosterone levels are off the dial. It is enough to make Tom Holland drop his crochet.
GIGI’S A CUT ABOVE LIZ
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GIGI Hadid models the Versace dress that made Elizabeth Hurley an instant sensation back in 1994 for the fashion magazine 72.
And incredibly, Gigi manages to look even lovelier than Liz did back in the day.
But then Gigi is not standing next to Hugh Grant.
“I ALWAYS dreamed of being at a club as big as Manchester City,” says Enzo Fernandez after his transfer from Chelsea – winners of the Champions League (twice) and current holders of the Club World Cup.
Argentine Enzo will be forever despised by millions of England fans for his oafish World Cup celebrations.
He has a genius for being an offensive oaf.
A REAL BRUCIE BONUS
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IF you were growing up in the Sixties, then you knew exactly what you had to do if you wanted to court Miss World.
You had to be George Best. That’s how high the bar was.
Legend has it that George “dated” seven Miss World winners, including America’s Marjorie Wallace in 1973 and Swede Mary Stavin in 1977.
George demurred. “It was only four,” he wrote in his autobiography.
“I didn’t turn up for the other three.”
But now Ann Sidney, crowned Miss World in 1964, tells this newspaper that during her reign she was secretly involved with another Sixties superstar – Bruce Forsyth.
So, it turns out you DIDN’T have to be George Best after all.
But . . . Bruce Forsyth? Now we all love Bruce. But let’s face it, even in the mid-Sixties, Bruce was no Fifth Beatle.
He was no George Best. Didn’t he do well?
STITCH IN TIME
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THE Bayeux Tapestry is what the 11th century had instead of the internet.
Almost 1,000 years after it was created, the tapestry is, all at once, a timeless work of art, a contemporary news report and the world’s first action-packed comic strip.
The fact it has even survived this long boggles the mind.
That it depicts in such detail the last time this country was successfully invaded is one of the wonders of the world.
Anyone who sees it at the British Museum will remember it for the rest of their lives.
It is our history, reaching out to us across 1,000 years.