Small boat arrivals are down a bit. Meanwhile, Reform UK has had a difficult year over its donations and seen its vote eaten into by Restore Britain. Compound this with the arrival of a prime minister more energetic and popular than the last one and it has become possible to imagine Labour winning the next election – and with a healthy majority. On the other hand, it is possible to see the cavalry arriving over the hill to bolster Nigel Farage’s troops – in the shape of the slavery reparations movement.

The potential of slavery reparations to throw a hand grenade into UK politics should not be under-estimated. For the moment, the demands for compensation may seem a fringe issue, a bizarre joke even – especially the suggestion by a UN judge that Britain owed Caribbean nations £18 trillion and that this was an ‘under-estimate’ (for context, this is about six times Britain’s annual GDP).

The trouble is, though, for Caribbean and African nations it is very much not a joke. Many seem to have decided that the way to a brighter future is not so much development – such as that which has made some former western colonies such as Singapore wealthy – but the extraction of compensation cash from their former colonial masters. They are behaving like layabouts suddenly motivated by a daytime TV advert for an ambulance-chasing legal firm. Yet the UN appears to be on their side:........

© The Spectator