THE RESULTS had been very good. Played three, won three. Admittedly they were all home fixtures, but they had every reason to feel confident as they faced their first "away challenge" in Europe.

THE idea that we may not be alone in the universe is steadily gaining credence.

I DON'T know exactly what I expected from Royal Ascot but it certainly wasn't the joyous and slightly crazy experience I had there this week.

REPUBLIC-building Eurocrats have proved that Brexiteers were right all along.

LOYALTY is a wonderful trait, which we can all admire. But whoa. Would we admire those who remained loyal to the end to Hitler and his filthy creed? Obviously not; so there must be limits.

I AM a monarchist, for purely pragmatic reasons.

SIX years after the British people voted to take back control, our democratic self-governance continues to be subverted by unelected European institutions.

I can remember with shuddering horror the days when the telephone service in this country was still nationalised, a vast, inefficient state monopoly which could keep you waiting 18 months for a new telephone line, never seemed to keep its public call boxes working and took weeks to respond to a complaint. Then along came Mrs Thatcher and privatisation.

THE TIMES Education Commission's report, out this week, is set to reveal the shocking news that primary school children are arriving at classrooms aged five unable even to say their own names.

ADDRESSING Labour's annual conference in 1976, Prime Minister James Callaghan was in no mood to indulge his audience.

ONE DAY the failed Russian conquest of Ukraine will be over. Then scholars, analysts, historians and others will pour in to write their postfacto histories.

The PM has picked ministers who owe him everything and do his bidding. They have a duty to the country but are shirking it

This ought to be the cabinet’s moment. A prime minister who exults in his own uniqueness is dragging his party down in the polls. Byelection reverses loom, and perhaps even a general election defeat. An unexpectedly large number of MPs have just voted no confidence. If ever there was a moment for his most senior colleagues to speak and act on behalf of the Tory party, this is it.

Instead, what do we get from Boris Johnson’s cabinet team? We get parroted rhetoric about massive agendas, his capacity to “deliver”, lines in the sand, and moving on. We get a video of the cabinet compliantly listening as Johnson delivers a five-minute Putin-style ramble in which he pointedly ignores Monday’s revolt entirely. And now we get windy, wishful waffle about how it will all be solved by tax cuts.

DESPITE the continued onslaught from some of those Conservative MPs who lost a no-confidence vote against him, Boris Johnson is far from finished as Prime Minister.

THE ONLY beneficiary of the mess in the Tory Party is Sir Keir Starmer. Labour barely even has to oppose at the moment: it is sufficient for it to just sit and laugh as a once great party becomes an undisciplined rabble. I remember the last time that happened and the result was a record Labour landslide. Is that what the idiots want?

THE scale of the reversal in Boris Johnson's political fortunes has been astonishing.

MY YOUNGEST grandbaby AJ was horrified and aghast at Paddington Bear's behaviour at Buckingham Palace.

THEY say that every dog has its day - and the Tory MPs who have been plotting for months to force Boris Johnson out of Downing Street had theirs today.

The magnificent Platinum Jubilee has drawn to a close, but its memory will linger long. It has been an historic occasion to gladden our hearts, lift our spirits and reaffirm our pride in Britain.

CHANCES are you have never heard of Colonel Shafiq Ahmed Khan, a former director of intelligence with Afghan Special Forces. But at this time of celebration of loyalty and duty, I think you should.

HAPPY Jubilee! As I write we are only halfway through the celebrations but I hope and trust everything will go to plan, Harry and Meghan won't rudely upstage Her Majesty and everyone, especially the Queen, will have a wonderful party. Because it's about bloody time!

Two cheers... make that three if he pulls this off - for Andy Cooke, our new chief inspector of constabulary. Mr Cooke, who used to run Merseyside Police, has issued explicit instructions to officers up and down this crime-benighted isle of ours.

THE HALF-TERM plot against Boris Johnson involving Tory MPs queuing to stick a knife in his back has run into trouble after one of its leading lights admitted he aims to drag Britain back into the EU's single market.

THE opening days of this unique Platinum Jubilee have produced two dramatically contrasting images. Yesterday, the moving service of thanksgiving at St Paul's Cathedral was made all the more poignant by the absence of the central, cherished figure to whom it was dedicated.

Service of thanksgiving raised the Genesis question – how many people can you swap out of this lineup before it ceases to be Genesis?

The archbishop of Canterbury, Justin Welby, couldn’t attend the service of thanksgiving in St Paul’s Cathedral, having tested positive for Covid a few days before, which was not a problem, since it was for this very purpose that the centuries-long enmity with York was cultivated – so there would be a Stephen Cottrell waiting in the wings, with a sermon ready to go.

Then Prince Andrew also got Covid; it is unclear who could understudy his role in the proceedings, let’s hope nobody. By the morning of the event, the first platinum jubilee in the nation’s history, the Queen wasn’t feeling very well, either, and would not be attending. By 2022 protocol, they should have got Prince Charles to speak on behalf of everybody, surrounded by their hats.

CHANCELLOR Rishi Sunak gets a round of applause for minor tax relief. But what is the point? He raised our taxes in the first place. Everything else is just paperwork.

George Monbiot on the growing global food crisis and the degradation of our soils. Can the solution be found in the lab?

When farming is degrading our soils and people are still going hungry, is it time to change how we get our food?

“Ninety-nine percent of our calories come from soil. Everything we are, everything we have built, everything in our lives comes from the soil. Without it, we’re finished,” says the author and environmentalist George Monbiot. “And yet, we treat it with extreme disrespect and disregard.”

Whatever our vision of the future, there is no doubting public admiration and affection for the Queen herself

As the Sex Pistols said back in 1977, the year of the silver jubilee, never mind the bollocks. It really doesn’t matter what it’s for – just seize the moment: an extra bank holiday for this miserable country, which has the fewest national holidays in Europe and the second fewest in the world. England and Wales have just eight, Northern Ireland 10, Scotland 11; by contrast Europe averages 12.8, and Japan has 17.

Enjoy a release from England’s grindstone working culture, whipped on by cabinet luminaries Liz Truss, Priti Patel, Kwasi Kwarteng and Dominic Raab, who in 2012 damned British workers as “the worst idlers in the world” in their obnoxious book Britannia Unchained.

Polly Toynbee is a Guardian columnist

THE height of the Blitz in 1940, Lord Beaverbrook, the mercurial owner of the Daily Express, turned to his legendary editor Arthur Christiansen and extolled the British public's resilience in the face of Nazi Germany's bombing campaign: "Did you ever know such a magnificent people?

IT MUST surely be a principle of a free society that no citizen has any form of criminal record which does not result either from a conviction in a court of law or from the acceptance of an automatic fixed penalty.

I'M A CHRONICALLY late adopter. Left to my own devices I'd be knocking a couple of flints together and tidying out my tinderbox.

THE sense of excitement is mounting. As the Platinum Jubilee comes near, a mood of joyous patriotism is sweeping our land. The unique nature of this milestone means the celebrations to mark the Queen's 70 years on the throne will create a magnificent spirit of unity throughout Britain.

THE JUBILEE celebrations will be in full flow in just a few days' time, and here's hoping you have a marvellous time.

THE FIRST time I went to Northern Ireland I was shot at. Nothing personal, I don't think - I was a young local newspaper reporter on foot patrol with a bunch of squaddies from my London news patch.

IS IT just me or are we looking at a steaming damp squib from Sue Gray? A statement of the bleeding obvious?

Full report: Texas police made ‘wrong decision’, says officialNRA pressing on with Houston event, less than 300 miles awayHow lawmakers in thrall to the NRA stifle gun safety lawsGrief, loss and love as Uvalde struggles under a heavy cloud

McCraw, using a map of the school as a prop, says the back door at Robb elementary school was left propped open by a teacher.

Salvador Ramos, the shooter, crashed his car outside the school and began firing at two men outside, who were not hurt.

We’re here to report facts as we know them now, and not to defend what was done, or criticize what was done, or the action taken.

CHANCELLOR Rishi Sunak, once the golden boy of politics who could do no wrong, must be well accustomed to getting it in the neck by now.

A TRULY scandalous revelation crept into the daylight last week. An extra £12billion a year has been added by government to what we pay into the National Health Service.