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.

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.

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.

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?

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.

CHAIN smoking feverishly as he lay naked on the floor of his Downing Street office, Britain's top civil servant babbled incoherently about Armageddon.

The cost-of-living crisis is not confined to Britain . It is not going to be resolved by the government alone. We have been through a pandemic followed by a war and could not reasonably expect to escape adverse consequences and now all of us have a part to play.

COUPLE goals is the Instagram-friendly phrase lavished on those celebrity couples who are thought aspirational. Occasionally, the other half and I are thrilled recipients of this glowing accolade. Rather than fling it in the direction of smooching celebrities, though, I'd like to express my boundless admiration for the relationship of Ukraine's courageous President Volodymyr Zelensky and his equally brave wife Olena Zelenska.

ENVY is one of the seven deadly sins, so I suppose I'm in double trouble when I admit to being envious of those who believe there is a God and have complete faith in Him.

The Platinum Jubilee is a unique milestone in the story of our nation. Already a mood of anticipation is spreading as the public prepares to celebrate this special occasion and express thanks to the Queen for her 70 years of dedicated service.

VICTORIA Beckham is about as thin as you can be and still have the strength to walk, but her surprising announcement this week that 'skinny is over' is welcome, since the fashion industry's fixation with size is the source of so much unhappiness for women, and anxiety for mothers of daughters.

COMPARE and contrast. Two police officers armed with nothing more than a truncheon, a can of spray and a chair storm into a church to confront a murderous terrorist who has just callously stabbed to death a politician.

WHEN Boris Johnson and Keir Starmer lock horns next week over the final report by the senior mandarin Sue Gray into unlawful Downing Street gatherings, a police inquiry will loom large.

IT seems that "scamming" - fraud and embezzlement of other people's bank accounts by deception - is now Britain's most widespread crime. It outclasses burglary, pocket picking and mugging put together. If I raise it in this column it is because a little old lady living down my lane nearly fell for such a "scam" and lost her life savings.

THE investigation by the Metropolitan Police into Partygate has ended, not in a bang, but a whimper.

THE conquest of inflation was one of Margaret Thatcher's central missions when she became Prime Minister at the end of the 1970s. She had seen how soaring prices wrecked jobs, businesses, savings and living standards. With her usual clarity, she said, "The lesson is clear. Inflation devalues us all."

Levi Bellfield is serving a whole life term for the murder of three people, including a child of 13, and the attempted murder of another and now wishes to get married to someone who has been visiting him.

AN ARRAY of adjectives have been used to describe Judy Murray, 62, foremost among them 'formidable'.

ANOTHER day, another "smart" motorway smash-up. The latest came when the much-vaunted SVD cameras apparently failed to register a broken-down lorry on a stretch of the M3, its former safe hard shoulder now a lethal live lane.

CAN YOU believe the shambles our House of Commons has turned into? It's so absurd I keep expecting the Prime Minister to don a red coat and top hat as he introduces the next act in the parliamentary circus.

IT'S NOT the sort of question where you might need to phone a friend or even ask the audience. Faced with domestic problems that mirror the 2008 financial crash and have grim echoes of rampant inflation in the 1980s, ask yourself: if you were running the country, where would you rather be?

From soaring inflation to government debt, the economic problems that face this country are serious enough. But now another form of trouble is looming. Across the rail industry, unions are threatening a wave of strikes that could bring Britain to a halt. The potential for a summer of chaos reflects a new militancy in response to plans for a major overhaul of the transport network.

THE storm clouds are gathering over the economy. As inflation soars and the Bank of England warns of a potential recession, the cost-of-living crisis looks set to worsen.