Monday

Matt Hancock rarely disappoints. As entertainment, if not as health secretary. It was his remarks to the select committee about prioritising medicines over food in a no-deal Brexit that understandably captured the imagination. After all, it’s not every day a cabinet minister announces it is government policy to make sure everyone can get their hands on enough valium so that no one will be stressed about being starved to death. But Man-Boy Hancock was equally clueless on his department’s 10-year plan for the NHS. It wasn’t particularly encouraging to hear him pinning his hopes on the new “Getting it Right First Time” programme – presumably the “Getting it Right Second or Third Time” programme hadn’t been a great success for those who had died – and his maths were equally suspect. Try as he might, Hancock couldn’t quite understand how if more GPs retired than were recruited, their numbers would inevitably go down. It also emerged that the 10-year plan had made no provision for dentistry and that there were already huge shortages in various parts of the country. In Devon and Cornwall there are no NHS dentists with vacancies for new patients and even Hancock conceded that a round trip of 300 miles to see a dentist was a bit of a stretch. Still, at least all those with no teeth won’t be so bothered by the food shortages.

No winter sun for tired MPs, just cats and dogs in the Commons | John Crace Read more

Tuesday

There was more than a hint of despair in the press gallery during the Brexit debate. The feeling of being ground down by politicians who consistently disappoint when the stakes are at their highest had even got to jaded hacks who thought they had already seen it all. As so often, Theresa May set the tone by trying to present the defeat of her Brexit bill two weeks previously as a major victory. Now parliament had told Brussels what it wouldn’t accept, it was up to the EU to come up with some counter-proposals that would get through the Commons. She was going to single-handedly reopen negotiations with herself and still come out on the losing side. Jeremy Corbyn was not much more inspiring, reading through his script disinterestedly – as if it was the first time he had seen it – and refusing to take interventions from anyone on either side who didn’t share his Brexit worldview. Then came Ken Clarke, usually one of the sharper minds in the Commons, who descended into self-parody when he time and again went out of his way to insist he wasn’t going to take up much time as his views were well known only to drone on for the best part of half an hour. Frank Field had the right idea by saying the whole debate was a waste of time as everyone had already made up their minds so they might as well cut to the vote. Sadly, his suggestion was not adopted. The day ended as dismally as it had begun, with a stone-cold pizza delivered to the office in Westminster. Some days you really are better off not getting out of bed.

Wednesday

January is never a good month for me. This year Brexit has come close to tipping me over the edge. It’s the first thing on my mind when I wake up and the last thing I think about at night. Most of my usual coping mechanisms, such as having therapy – I’ve missed every session this year due to work commitments – and counting the number of days past the shortest day – we’re now 40 days past December 21st so it’s now much the same as earlyish November – are proving ineffective, so I’ve had to adopt some more radical tactics. With varying degrees of success. The pilates is going quite well, even though I am still utterly hopeless at it and can scarcely bend at all. But the football has taken a severe downturn. After far too many poor Spurs games in a half-empty, soulless Wembley – whatever the stadium was designed for, it wasn’t football – I thought it would be good for my mental health to stay away from the Watford game. And when Watford were 1-0 up with 10 minutes to play, it looked the right call. Then we scored two late goals and people who did go have been texting that I missed the comeback of the season. You can’t win even when your team does. Still, I have been missing my daughter a little less, now that the temperatures in Minneapolis have hit -30. Under those conditions, I’m not that keen to see her. On the other hand, my wife has suspiciously renewed her US passport after 22 years so the chances are I’ll be on my own before long.

Thursday

Back in the early 1990s, when I reached my mid-30s, I finally got round to taking out a personal pension. Something I’d never got round to before, partly because it hadn’t occurred to me I would still be alive at retirement age, but mostly because I had never had any spare money to invest in a pension. With my customary inattention to detail, I did next to no research on what the best pension might be and duly signed on the dotted line with the same financial adviser that my friend Alex had used. On a couple of occasions early on, as I earned a little more, I increased my monthly contributions but other than that I barely gave my pension a moment’s thought. Except when I got my annual statement. The most recent one informed me I could expect to retire with a pension of under £5,000 per year. Living the dream. So I was amazed to get an email this week from the financial adviser who sold me the pension, someone I hadn’t spoken to for over 25 years, informing me that the pension he had sold me might not have been ideal and might technically be described as having been mis-sold. Then came the better news. He was no longer working for the company who had gone around selling sub-standard pensions and had moved to a firm that specialised in getting compensation for people who had been mis-sold pensions. So would I like him to act on my behalf in seeing if he could recover the money from the pension, which he might have mis-sold? No apology, no shame. The man should have been a politician. Needless to say, I said yes on the spot. I’ll keep you posted.

Friday

In an interview with the Westminster magazine, The House, Chris Grayling comes up with an unusual explanation as to why he has a reputation for being hopeless. It’s because he is actually such an exceptionally talented member of the cabinet that those journalists who aren’t convinced Brexit is going entirely to plan are using him as a lightning rod for their misgivings. When he chose to award a £13.8m contract to a ferry company that had no ferries he was just trying to give small business a boost. Chris believes that Chris is just too able for his own good. There are now only two explanations for Failing Grayling. The first is that he is in total denial about his incompetence – even his colleagues think he’s useless. The second is that he is a parody account of a minister whose sole purpose is to wind up liberals. In which case he is one of many. I’m increasingly convinced that Charles Moore’s Spectator column is written by Craig Brown. Last week Moore denounced the NHS for trying to save his life by offering him a free bowel cancer screening as an act of the nanny state at work; this week he has championed food shortages by suggesting it’s time for a Brexit diet book, arguing everyone should use their country estate to grow their own vegetables (along with a bit of lettuce smuggling on the side from mainland Europe), and that people were happier in the war anyway. Then we had Nick Timothy in the Telegraph writing that the solution to the Northern Ireland backstop would be for the Republic of Ireland to become British. Being a satirist gets harder by the day.

Digested week, digested: Bribe and rule