Killer Joke

PHILIP Rycroft, former permanent secretary at the Department for Exiting the European Union, had them queueing out the door at Edinburgh Uni for a speech on Brexit and the Union this week. His department is abbreviated to DExEU. Mr Rycroft said the in-house joke was that it stood for “The Department for Exciting the EU”. More plausibly, he said it was also known as “The Department for Executing the UK”. Many a true word said in jest, we fear.

Spoof Davidson

TORY survivalists have launched a bid to stop the party north of the border doing a runner. Scottish Conservatives Together want to lash themselves to Boris Johnson and Brexit come what may and stop a breakaway party forming. After one “Ruth Davidson” signed up to their website, organiser Lachlan Bruce admitted it might be “somebody having a bit of a laugh”. So it proved. Pranked on day one isn’t a good start. But it’s still better than Boris’s.

What the Fit?

BUT perhaps a solution to Scottish Tory agonies is at hand. Hark! What sweet music is this? Why, ‘tis northeast nightingale Peter Chapman with “Poems & Sangs in the Doric”. The crusty auld fermer turned MSP has recorded a charity CD in his native tongue. Surely his traditional tales of loons and quines and EU subsidies could calm one and all? We asked the party’s press office if it was listening to its copy on repeat yet. Curiously, it was a hard No.

New Testaments

FANATICAL bibliophile and sometime First Minister Nicola Sturgeon combined her love of books and Twitter last weekend, posting a snap of two new hardbacks from her home. “I can’t decide which one to read first - but that’s a nice dilemma,” she said. More like a riddle. One of the books was Margaret Atwood’s globally-embargoed Testaments, which wasn’t meant to be in the shops for another three days. We feel a whodunnit coming on...

Leak it or not

MR RYCROFT also had a top tip on how to tell if the UK’s Brexit talks with the EU are genuine negotiations or merely blethers over biscuits. “The system we’re dealing with here is a brilliantly leaky system,” he said. “When I worked in the European Commission for a couple of years, I discovered the best way of getting something into the public domain was to leave it on a photocopier marked highly confidential. The fact that it isn’t leaking like a sieve now makes me worried.” You read it here first, folks. No news is bad news.

Labour woes

JOHN McDonnell addressed a rally in Glasgow yesterday, just weeks after causing Scottish Labour a major headache by using an Edinburgh Fringe appearance to insist the UK party would not block a second independence referendum. Scottish leader Richard Leonard made his pleasure known from the podium."John, John, John, an old friend - always welcome in Scotland," he began. "My task, our goal, is to get a radical Labour Government elected over the next few months, led by Jeremy Corbyn, so that John will be too busy transforming the economy, redistributing power and wealth, to have time to appear at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe."