When I was young and green and working as a gossip columnist, I learned much from the energy and enthusiasm of my colleague Lady Olga Maitland. Long before Boris Johnson decided he could be an MP at the same time as editing this magazine, Olga – she was always ahead of the curve – combined her duties as a gossip reporter with serving as the Conservative MP for Sutton and Cheam. And my goodness, she was interested in bins. She’d breeze into the offices of the Ephraim Hardcastle column at the dot of 11 every morning, trilling triumphantly – she was a great triller, was Ollie – about the latest development in her campaign to improve the bin collections in Sutton.

Reform has found its white whale, its True Cross, the transformative technology that, would our hidebound and corrupt uniparty establishment only allow it, transform Broken Britain

Reform has found its white whale, its True Cross, the transformative technology that, would our hidebound and corrupt uniparty establishment only allow it, transform Broken Britain

As a clueless twentysomething living in Lambeth, I was a bit mystified. I didn’t realise bins even got collected (that was Lambeth). But Olga was onto something. She had identified – again, ahead of the curve – that people really care much less about ideology than they do about not being surrounded by piles of humming rubbish, and that regardless of whether improving bin collections was technically a matter for the MP or for the local council,........

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