Ladies and Gentlemen, Dronarama Productions reluctantly presents Malice in Wonderland, a new production starring all your old favourites, Big Don, Mad Musk, Mandy Pandy and, direct from anywhere but Clacton, Nigel as the Ventriloquist's Dummy. And I fear it will run and run. Considerably longer than Keir Starmer at this rate.

Well, that's how what it seems like right now. Trump, the man with a criminal record too long to list here but which includes rape, one of inciting violent insurrection in which five people died, falsifying business accounts and racketeering — and three times bankrupt — is now in the UK to hear the King and the Prime Minister (Starmer at time of writing) fawn over and flatter him because that is what must happen to win trade deals and lower tariffs. Gun salute of the Windsor, not Chicago variety, a carriage ride through the Great Park with six royals by his side and a state banquet. 

A few days earlier a football thug called Tommy Robinson with an equally impressive charge sheet (jailed five times in the last 20 years and another bankrupt) called for a march in London apparently to 'Unite the Kingdom'. It attracted more than 100,000 and according to many reports they weren't all tattooed morons. For good measure, a novelty guest speaker, the ketamine-fuelled Elon Musk, beamed in from the US, calling for the overthrow of the UK government and to Fight, Fight, Fight.  

Meanwhile Farage, Trump's cheerleader-in-chief and who is yet to disown Robinson, captures another Tory, this time a serious thinker, Danny Kruger, who predicts his old party is finished. And Buttons, alias smarmy creep Peter Mandelson, is plotting (because that is what he does) to make big trouble for Starmer for firing him from the job he should never have had. Writing adoring love notes to a convicted paedophile is never wise. Especially when it was to Jeffrey Epstein, the man whose ability to wreck lives and careers has not stopped just because he in his grave. 

Add to that heady mix, Starmer, the man who led Labour to a majority of more than 150, is now said, 14 months later, to be propping up the bar in that old boozer, the Last Chance Saloon. 

It is almost too Lewis Carroll to understand how we got here but, make no mistake, that's where we are. The world is shifting hard right and America under Trump is in danger of becoming an autocracy led by the ill-educated draft dodger who cuts off funding to some of the world's finest universities and puts his nation's health at risk by installing a genuine crazy in charge of health. He is powerless to stop Putin and allows Netanyahu to commit genocide in a terrible sort of reverse Holocaust. And still we have to spray him with admiration.

Yesterday the Mandelson debacle was debated for three hours in an emergency debate. It was led by one of the few genuine big beasts in the Tory ranks, Sir David Davis. There was little cheer for the government because it is clear that Mandelson was not properly vetted before he was given the premier ambassadorial role. But given his track record — sacked twice from previous cabinets and universally known for being instinctively drawn to power and money, including Russian oligarchs — surely no vetting was needed. He should never have been considered.

The chamber was at its best and there was an impassioned, extemporised speech by Stephen Flynn of the SNP when in full-flow Dundee he said Fuck Off . The saintly Jim Allister of the Traditional Unionists looked as if he had swallowed a fly. Then Flynn made it clear he was quoting what Mandelson had told a pesky reporter from the FT.

Keir Starmer, a bit of an automaton by nature, is looking increasingly shifty and isolated. Unless he can come up with a most unlikely answer as to why the revolting Mandelson was appointed he should stand aside. And if he does, he might fancy the vacancy at the British Embassy in Washington.  

*****

My dear old friend John Kidd, all six foot six of skin and bone, has turned showbiz entrepreneur at the age of 80. Beaverbrook's grandson produced a show, 'Change will Come', at a pub theatre in Guildford, it was sold out and might now get to tour bigger theatres. 

One of them is the Yvonne Arnaud, also in Guildford and when John went touring bars and cafes with flyers advertising the show before last Saturday's production he wandered into the Arnaud to see if the management there would take one. "I was surprised to see the actors and production team all lined up next to a red carpet but they were very nice.  Then a couple of heavies appeared and tried to bundle me out.”

Why? “Well, they said they were expecting a royal to come and celebrate the venue's 60th birthday. Oh, I said, I know most of the royals [as a former international show jumper and polo player he does] but I was still ejected.

"The royals in question were the Duke and Duchess of Edinburgh, Edward and Sophie. And they are the only ones I've never met so it was just as well I didn't try to give them a flyer.”

The little show came at an otherwise gloomy time for John; his sister Jane, a distinguished horsewoman, died aged 82 last month and I wrote her obit for The Times. Jane was a devout Christian and led an altogether different life from that of her half-sister Lady Jeanne Campbell. Jeanne was New York corr for her grandfather's Standard. 

She married Norman Mailer but before she did she was said to have had affairs with lovers who covered just about the full spectrum of looks, charm, irascibility and politics. Namely JFK, Khrushchev, Oswald Mosley, Randolph Churchill, Ian Fleming and Fidel Castro.

*****

AND FINALLY

I see Andrew and Fergie made an appearance at yesterday’s funeral for the Duchess of Kent. Were any lives of greater contrast, the beautiful, dutiful, shy Katherine who in later life thought only of others, lived alone in a modest flat and taught music to state school kids in London and Hull as plain Mrs Kent… and the grasping, selfish, lying, money grabbing, title-obsessed Yorks?

ALAN FRAME

17 September 2025