SUDDENLY things are beginning to look a little more rosy for the ­Government. A new opinion poll has just given them a 14-point lead over Labour.

Some more specific polling reckons that almost 40 per cent of people who voted Labour in Yorkshire last time won’t do so this time around.

Or ever in the foreseeable future, I expect. I mean, why would you? But things are still terribly tight. There is still the prospect — receding a little, mercifully — that we might wake up on

December 13 to find Magic Grandpa ­running the country, with help from that Swinson woman and the Scottish ­Nationalists. That’s always been the problem.

Labour might not have to gain any seats at all to become the biggest party. It could even lose seats overall, depending on how the SNP and Lib Dems manage. But that’s less likely now. And that’s because, at last, Nigel Farage has seen the light.

Bowing to intense pressure from parts of his own party, Farage has finally conceded that the Brexit Party will not field candidates in the 317 constituencies won by the Conservatives at the last election.

That is an enormous help to the Tories and Boris should be on his knees thanking Farage from the bottom of his heart. It will have been a difficult decision for Farage to have taken. He does not much like Boris’s deal.

But he has now come around to the view that is the only deal attainable, and the only way we will get Brexit across the line and able to move on from this state of perpetual limbo.

Like him or not (and I do), there has not been a more effective politician in the UK these last 20 years than Nigel Farage. Without him there would have been no prospect of Brexit whatsoever.

He has single-mindedly pursued his goal — to get us the hell out of the EU — and he has been devastatingly successful.

GREAT CONCESSION

And when it looked like Parliament was backsliding on Brexit, he returned in force with a brand new party, which swept the board at the last Euro ­elections. He has allowed nothing to stand in the way of achieving his goal.

And so it is only right that he has faced reality and decided the best bet for Britain is a Tory government with a large majority to get that deal through. He deserves reward for this. The BBC may think he’s a nasty old fascist and the liberals may hate him, but they cannot deny his achievements.

If I were Boris I’d make the bloke ambassador to the US. It’s about time we had someone in Washington who doesn’t sneer at everything Donald Trump says and does.

But before he goes (if he goes). Please, Nigel. Those 317 seats were a great concession. And I know you had all the candidates up and running ready to fight.

But could you possibly extend your generosity to 50 or 60 of the marginal seats held by Labour which the Tories desperately need to form a government with a big majority?

Not the ones the Tories can NEVER win. The others. Stockton South, for example, and Bishop Auckland.

That would be your last gift. Not a gift to the Tories, who I know you don’t trust, and with good reason. But to Brexit and those of us who voted for it three years ago.

Let's have Mara like her

BRITAIN has too few politicians we can all leer at in a gratuitously sexist manner. Male or female, I should add.

I suppose we have Zac Goldsmith and Caroline Flint (who are also rather good at their jobs). The Italians, though, have this lady. Mara ­Carfagna. Remember that name.

She’s currently challenging Silvio Berlusconi for leadership of the Forza Italia party. Unsurprisingly, she was once a model and has recently been voted No1 Hottest Politician In The World.

No quibble with that, although after a ­haircut and with his uniform on, Kim Jong-un scrubs up quite nicely.

It's time to scrap HS2 plan

THERE’S something a bit fishy about this latest report on HS2. That’s the proposed high-speed train which will whisk us all to Birmingham several minutes quicker than we can get there now. And has involved gouging out great chunks of countryside.

The report reckons that despite the spiralling costs, the project should go ahead and everything is tickety-boo. Now the co-author of the report has said the conclusions in it were a “whitewash”.

Increasingly I think we should scrap this thing and invest in better rail networks in the north of the country. Especially around my area on Teesside where the local service consists of a rail car bought from the Czechoslovakian government in 1949.

Also, why do these ­projects take so long? I’m sure I remember standing beside a great big hole in London in about 1964 and asking my dad: “What’s that?”

“They’re digging a new railway, son. It will be ­magnificent. One day soon you’ll be able to get from Slough to Essex in under an hour.”

“Why would anyone want to go from Slough to Essex?”

“Well, son. People in Slough who fancy having a look around Romford, say, but want to do so quickly.”

“What’s it going to be called, Dad?”

“Crossrail, son. Now let’s pop to Lyons Corner House for a bite to eat.”

Too much time

HERE’S a new guide to email ­etiquette. Apparently one of the worst things you can say in an email is “Did you see my last email?”.

That really annoys people. Personally, I don’t like emails which ask me to do something.
Nor do I like emails from people refusing to do ­something I’ve asked them to do. Nor emails to me addressed to Rob, Ron or Rodney.

On the other hand I quite like emails from ­Nigerian gentlemen offering me hundreds of thousands of pounds if I just pass over my bank details. I think too much of our time is spent gazing at inboxes.

Freedom of speech

BARONESS Warsi is a talented ­politician and a strong defender of Muslim rights.

But her party, the ­Conservatives, is right not to hold an investigation into “Islamophobia”.

Nastiness directed towards Muslims is vile and should be prosecuted on every occasion.

But penalising people for having doubts about the ideology of Islam is a grotesque infringement of freedom of speech.

The party is in disarray

THE Labour Party has just parachuted someone into the safe seat of Jarrow, Tyne & Wear.

Kate Osborne is a ­London Corbynista leftie who once posted a picture of Theresa May with a gun held to her head.

Loads of Labour MPs have signed a petition calling for her to be removed.

Meanwhile, the original Labour candidate can’t stand because he’s facing ­allegations of sexual harassment. The party is in disarray.

If you live in Jarrow, vote for Mark Conway, the SDP ­candidate and a top bloke.

Get your flippers on Boris

QUICK memo to the Government. People living near Doncaster have to swim from their living rooms to the kitchen to make a cup of tea. Half of the country is under flood water.

Largely those parts of the country where YOU need to win seats in this bloody election. So here’s a tip. When flooding occurs like that, in the middle of an election campaign, this is what you do.

You turn up in the stricken area with a boat, a snorkel and some flippers and lots of TV cameras and stay there for five days. Rescuing old ladies and stuff. Being sympathetic. Hand out lifejackets. Stack up some sand bags.

Because the horrible suspicion is that Jeremy Corbyn was right when he said that if the flooding had occurred in Surrey, the Army would have been called out at 09:00 Day One. Get a grip, Boris mate.

Traditions and history are important

THERE is sentient life in our universities after all.  Students at Worcester College, Oxford, have rebelled against their woke provost, a woman called Professor Kate Tunstall.

MOST READ IN OPINION

She tried to abolish a number of traditions observed in the college common room. First, the saying of grace before meals.

She wanted that replaced by the reading of a “range of set texts of thanksgiving from any world culture, religious or not”. She also thought students shouldn’t have to stand when a senior academic entered the room. Balls, said the students, voting to keep both traditions.

Traditions and history are important. I hope Professor Tunstall understands that now.

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