Lord Bonkers' Diary: An amusing limerick told to me by Herbert Gladstone

Textual critics - perhaps those from the Department of Long Books at the University of Rutland at Belvoir - who pore over these diaries will discover that this entry is headed 'Friday' in the current issue of Liberator, but Thursday here.

My thinking was that having two consecutive entries headed 'Thursday' would emphasise that time had passed between them, but the production staff at Liberator HQ found it too confusing. And who is to say they were wrong?

Besides, there is a deeper mystery here. The issue of Liberator containing this diary arrived on my doormat less than a week after I sent the copy off, yet in the course of it a whole week elapses.

This does lend support to theory that Lord Bonkers is a Time Lord and suggests this and the subsequent entries in this week's diary are dispatches from the future.

Thursday

Back to the Hall at last after my tour – this electioneering business is hard work and this time is proving deeply confusing.

First I went to Buckingham – a place that always reminds me of an amusing limerick told to me by Herbert Gladstone – and found Stephen Dorrell knocking on doors. He was for many years Conservative MP for Loughborough and our paths crossed from time to time, so naturally I engaged in some good-natured chivvying about the shortcomings of the Tory view of the world. Blow me down if he didn’t turn out to be the Liberal Democrat candidate!

Then I visited Finchley and ran into Luciana Berger. I demanded to know why she wasn’t In Liverpool and added some salty comments on the leadership of the Labour Party… It all proved rather embarrassing. I shall draw a veil over my encounter with Sam Gyimah in Kensington.

Lord Bonkers was Liberal MP for Rutland South West, 1906-10.

Previously in Lord Bonkers' Diary:

• The Well-Behaved Orphans have been carefully measured
• Buckled inside the large wicker hamper
• From Whissendine to Essendine
• He had fashioned a rope from the bedclothes

"What we need, comrades, is Brexit"

The Liverpool Echo provides us with a reminder that Labour's hard left is every bit as much opposed to British membership of the European Union as the Conserservatives' hard right.

Paula Barker, a regional convener with Unison, is the favourite to be the next Labour candidate for the city's Wavertree division, the seat currently occupied by the newly Liberal Democrat MP Luciana Berger.

She is favourite not least because she has been backed by Momentum.

The Echo reports on a speech she gave last gives us some highlights from a speech she gave last year:

"If the left and the Labour party retreat into soft Brexitism or continue calls for another referendum, we are helping to create an environment where the far right can thrive." 

"May's deal is a bad deal, not because it moves us too far away from the EU, it is a bad deal because it continues to bind the UK to pro-market EU rules." 

"We should be very wary of those trying to shift Labour's position on Europe towards having a second referendum. What we need, comrades, is Brexit."

You can watch the speech in the video above.

Luciana Berger shows what it will take to survive in Jeremy Corbyn's Labour Party

You may have seen the front page lead of today's Guardian: a deeply worrying story about a sudden spike in the number of mental health patients dying unexpectedly in NHS care.

It was based on figures obtained by the former health minister Norman Lamb, the Liberal Democrat MP for North Norfolk.

The Guardian quoted Norman's comment on the figures:

"Significant numbers of unexpected deaths at the Mid Staffs NHS trust caused an outcry and these figures should cause the same because they show a dramatic increase in the number of people losing their lives,” Lamb said. 

“NHS England and the government should set up an investigation into the causes of this as these figures involve tragedies for families around the country and the human impact is intense.” 

Underfunding of sometimes threadbare mental health services which are struggling to cope with rising demand for care is to blame, Lamb claimed.

One of the best things about politics since 2010 has been the new importance given to questions of mental health. This was exemplified by the 2012 debate in which MPs from both sides of the Commons spoke about their own experience of mental health problems.

So how did Luciana Berger, Labour's shadow mental health minister, respond to Norman Lamb's comments?

Let me show you:

.@normanlamb until 8 months ago u were the Minister for #mentalhealth. What did you do about this during ur 2.5yrs? pic.twitter.com/G4fFEF8vkV

— Luciana Berger (@lucianaberger) January 25, 2016

Why did Berger break from the cross-party approach to mental health?

It is certainly not because she is a wild left-winger.

Though, as the great niece of Manny Shinwell, she has some claim to come from the working-class aristocracy, she comes from an affluent background. She attended the private Haberdashers' Aske's School for Girls (current fees £15,516 per annum).

When she was parachuted into the Liverpool Wavertree constituency just before the 2010 election she soon became a controversial figure. She was seen as a Blairite, not least because of her friendship with Euan Blair.

But being a Blairite won't do her any favours now. Not with boundary changes in the air and threats of deselection coming from Corbyn loyalists. Certainly not on Merseyside.

Hence the stupid, partisan tweet we see above.

I am sure Berger is intelligent enough to realise that this approach will alienate the moderate voters Labour needs to win over to have any hope of winning the next election.

But she is trapped. And her fellow moderate Labour MPs are trapped too until they see the opportunity and summon the courage to depose Jeremy Corbyn and his strange inner circle of Trots and Stalinists.