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I was at a party last week in a private members’ club decorated like a Victorian brothel.

This turned out to be appropriate because an excitable Whitehall bigwig was telling me how he’s shafting EU rules.

He was obeying orders from boss Boris Johnson whose message to the EU is: “No surrender.”

The PM thinks it’ll be spiffingly popular to reject all EU regulations. This official’s job was to write new ones.

But this may not go down with the voters quite as well as Johnson imagines.

(Image: X00813)

Polls show that seven in ten want to retain the ban on mobile roaming charges and expensive phone calls from foreign hotspots.

That’s an EU regulation.

So is compensation for flight delays which 80 per cent want to keep.

They like EU regs which stop dodgy vacuum cleaners being sold, let them bathe in clean seawater, eat Cornish pasties only from Cornwall and Stilton cheese produced solely in Derbyshire, Leicestershire or Nottinghamshire.

Though, I grant you, that’s hard cheese on the Cambridgeshire village of Stilton forbidden from selling it.

But as polling guru Sir John Curtice notes: “There really isn’t much appetite for deregulation.”

This is not about returning to the battlements to fight a war against Brexit which is now lost.

It’s about winning the peace, and getting the best for Britain out of our new trade arrangements.

Sajid Javid says everything will be hunky-dory because the Japanese manage to sell cars to the EU from British factories.

The Chancellor fails to mention they comply with EU standards to do so.

(Image: Her Majesty's Treasury HANDOUT/EPA-EFE/REX)

The social scientists aboard the independent and impartial UK in a Changing Europe research group say our motor manufacturers will produce 175,000 fewer cars a year if they are hit with ten per cent tariffs.

Which they will under Johnson’s proposed Aussie-EU trade proposal which nudges dangerously close to No Deal.

That’s massive job losses in the Midlands and the North.

Jaguar Land Rover boss Ralf Speth says he needs 20 million just in time parts each day, and the less alignment between Britain and Europe the more border checks will be introduced to stop him getting them.

That’s why he shut production lines at his four UK plants for our scheduled departure dates in April and October last year.

(Image: Coventry Telegraph)

Nor are people quite so fussed about immigration as they were when they gave Brexit the go-ahead, which is just as well as it will only fall by around 35,000 when free movement ends.

Perhaps the realisation the NHS relies on 66,000 EU migrants helps.

Which is 6,000 more than at the 2016 referendum.

NHS bigwigs are not just managing

(Image: PA)

New figures show there are 376 NHS penpushers earning at least £150,000, and many of them more than the PM’s £158,754 a year.

They include hospital trust chief executives and non-medical directors, and NHS England bosses.

I do appreciate that the NHS needs managing.

It’s the fifth largest employer in the world with 1.7million staff, though I doubt even the top brasshats of China’s People’s Liberation Army, the second biggest workforce next to the US Defence Department, get that kind of wonga.

(Image: Chinese Army)

And I’m sure you’d prefer to see that £56million plus spent on nurses.

In which case the health service could have 2,100 more of them. Or 1,800 extra doctors.

Any NHS worker earning £150,000 or more has to have the remuneration package approved by Health Secretary Matt Hancock or one of his ministers.

Which must stick in their craw a bit.

A health minister earns a little over £100,000 while Mr Hancock is on less than £147,000.

Boris's Doomsday

(Image: AFP)

Boris Trump (sorry, Johnson) released a video on Thursday in which he said: “Now we’re the party which speaks for everyone.”

Yes, Prime Minister, but not TO everyone.

Johnson’s ministers are banned from BBC’s Today programme and its seven million listeners.

They cannot talk to Susannah Reid and Piers Morgan on ITV’s Good Morning Britain, while Channel 4 is a no-no.

And a Johnson aide telling journalists before a No10 briefing they were barred sounded like a pub landlord refusing an obstreperous demand for drinks after last orders have been called.

(Image: Daily Mirror/Andy Stenning)

Tory whips rollock newbie MPs if they dare to mention Huawei.

If the PM’s one nation policy is to speak for everyone it can’t be for everyone except Radio 4 listeners, GMB viewers and Mirror readers.

Which means that on this week’s doomsday clock which counts down to the moment the PM comes a cropper, Johnson loses ten seconds.

Jim puts joke to bed

(Image: Ken McKay/ITV/REX)

Jim Davidson’s sexist gag at London’s Cavalry & Guards Club Brexit party: “It has split households.

"I’m a Leaver, my wife’s a Remainer.

"I leave for work. She remains in bed.”

Chloe wings it with Dove

In the ongoing war between No10 and the media over who should be allowed to hear its pearls of wisdom, Labour’s Charlotte Nichols complained to Cabinet Office minister Chloe Smith that the...ahem...headline issue is the PM refusing to reveal his preferred shampoo.

No such reticence from Chloe.

“I use Dove,” she said.

It's all over for Scottish chain male

(Image: AFP via Getty Images)

The most unlikely casualty of Brexit was the mayor of the tiny German village of Brunsmark (pop:150), an hour from Hamburg, who lost his job because of it.

Scot Iain Macnab, 70, had to hang up his official chains at midnight local time on January 31st under rules that the mayor must be eligible to vote in Germany.

And as he was no longer officially an EU citizen he can’t.