The Royals don’t want to risk becoming the subject of yet another American television interview, says Ann Widdecombe

Not meeting with Harry is an issue of trust (Image: Emmanuel Osodi/Anadolu via Getty Images)

The King was right not to meet Harry when the latter flew in for a brief visit in connection with the Invictus games.

The issue here is not forgiveness but trust. The royals simply cannot see Harry without fearing that their meeting will become the subject of yet another American television interview.

They pretty well have to take the words out of their mouths and look at them before putting them back and uttering them.

The King simply doesn’t need that at this time.

It is said that His Maj offered Harry a stay in a Royal residence, which he refused.

If that is true then we do not need to hear from His Royal Petulance again about how he needs armed security when he preferred a hotel to the safety of a Royal residence.

Nevertheless, I am glad Harry was cheered when he appeared at the Invictus event.

Those games shine like a beacon of worth in what has become a silly, self-obsessed, pointless celebrity lifestyle.

Last switch attempts to fool the electorate

Natalie Elphicke changes her mind more often than most of us change our socks (Image: Gareth Fuller/PA Wire)

Natalie Elphicke changes her mind more often than most of us change our socks.

She supported her then husband throughout his trial, then as soon as he was convicted announced she was divorcing him, then seemed to be supporting him again when he was released then changed her mind again and now condemns what he did and apologises for her comments at the time.

For years Elphicke has been not merely a Conservative but a hard-line Conservative but now supports the Labour Party.

Consistency is not her strong point so she should feel quite at home with Keir Starmer who drops policies almost as soon as he announces them: abolishing charitable status for private schools, abolishing the two child limit in benefit, scrapping tuition fees, increasing tax for top earners, re-nationalising, free movement of labour and most recently the £28billion Green Prosperity Plan. All reversed.

He and Elphicke deserve each other but the country deserves neither. Nor does it deserve another five years of a Conservative Party which is obsessed with its own internal strife, defenestrates leaders at the drop of a hat and lacks any clarity of principle or purpose.

Take the most recent pronouncements by the minister for common sense, the wonderful Esther McVey.

She wants, rightly, to stop the Civil Service recruiting diversity officers and employing outside organisations to offer guidance (goodbye and good riddance to Stonewall at last?). It is of course right out of Reform UK’s Contract with the People and one of the policies we say we would implement immediately.

So why has it taken the Tories so long? Why has it taken nearly five years of increasing wokery and billions of pounds thus wasted? Why only now is the nonsense being stopped?

Then at the weekend we had a minister still promising to ban live exports, which we could not do while members of the EU. We left the EU in January 2020 but it took till last December to even introduce the bill. Why?

The answer of course is that there is an election this year. Expect all manner of sensible things to be suddenly viable – and be fooled by none of it

Cat call was the elephant in the Zoom

One piece of good which came from the misery of lockdown was the way that Zoom took off as a means of communication. It revolutionised working from home and indeed made it possible.

In my own case, I cannot remember when I last had to trail to a TV studio in Plymouth or Exeter to record a 10-minute interview.

I can now do it from my study. It is so much easier to fix meetings when people do not need to get to a venue.

The early days of Zoom in lockdown were characterised by comic incidents as children burst into rooms and wandered up to their parent while the other parent chased after them, dogs stood up on their hind legs to stare at the screen and an unfortunate lawyer in the USA addressed a judge through a cat’s head because he did not know how to turn off the filter his children had installed.

Then we all got wise. Or did we? Last Wednesday I was talking to Times Radio via Zoom when my cat Aloysius suddenly jumped up between me and the screen.

Pre-occupied with a computer meltdown, I had forgotten to check the door was shut. As I swiftly removed him, I said in the middle of a sentence about prisoner releases “sorry, that was Aloysius” and then carried on. It must, of course, have been utterly incomprehensible to anybody just listening to the radio rather than watching on Zoom!

Hold the front page! Dismal delivery service is driving customers mad

Some weeks ago I wrote in this column of my utter despair that the highly efficient, utterly reliable and personal service provided for the last 14 years by a local newsagent in the delivery of my morning papers on Dartmoor was being taken over by a firm in, of all places, Stoke on Trent. My fears were not misplaced and I have endured weeks of missed deliveries, incorrect deliveries and above all, regular deliveries after midday.

Apparently, they cannot get the delivery drivers so why on earth offer the service? As neighbour after neighbour cancelled accounts, I tried to ask the management just that but was told by an irritated help desk lady “management does not communicate with customers”.

For the last week it has actually worked but I shall not be telling the neighbours yet in case it all goes haywire again. The firm concerned is called News Team. The local operation is run from Exeter where a pleasant lady called Cathy does communicate with customers but is powerless to alter anything.

Perhaps she should take over the whole show – or non-show.

Keep wokery out of uni campuses

Congratulations to Birmingham University for dismantling a student encampment (Image: Nick Wilkinson/Birmingham Live)

Congratulations to my alma mater, Birmingham University. Less than 24 hours after a pro-Palestine encampment was set up, the students were served with a legal notice to close the camp or face further action including referral to the police. Compared to the soggy response of Oxford and Cambridge, that shows a real will to protect Jewish students and anybody else who might feel intimidated as well as eliminating an eyesore from the campus.

One can only hope that where Birmingham leads other seats of learning will follow.