Boris Johnson has announced that MPs should be barred from acting as paid political consultants. Two noises came to mind, says the Mail: “a stable door slamming shut [and] the clattering hooves of a bolting horse”. The PM can expect fury from those MPs sitting on slender majorities who are wisely trying to keep a career going, says the Telegraph. “They are likely to be unimpressed.” Did Prince Andrew do favours for controversial property millionaire David “Spotty” Rowland in return for a £1.5m debt being paid off, asks The Sun. He needs to come clean. “Is Emily Maitlis free for a chat? It went well last time.” Pirates are making the supply crisis worse by hijacking ships bound for the UK. “We are all jolly rogered,” says the Daily Star.
Kendall Jenner wore a part-bra, part-dress to her friend Lauren Perez’s wedding this week, and the internet was left divided. Some people said the 26-year-old supermodel looked great. Others thought she was sabotaging the bride with the world’s most upstaging outfit. Honestly, wrote one Twitter user, “I’d rather have Kendall Jenner wear a wedding dress to my wedding than that”.
Inside politics
“There comes an inflection point in every premiership,” says Anthony Seldon in The Times. Once you pass it, there’s no going back. Boris Johnson is not there yet, but he’s “perilously close”. If he does pass it, the only thing that could save him is an absence of “credible successors”. I predicted early last year that Dominic Cummings would be out before last autumn if he didn’t adapt. If Johnson doesn’t change, he will be “gone by the end of 2023”.
Life
In her TV interview with Oprah Winfrey, Adele described how she was “trying to move forward with intention” from her divorce in 2019. “Whenever I noticed how I was feeling, I would sit down and I’d sit in it,” the 33-year-old singer explained – Hollywood speak that made her emotions “sound unpleasantly like the contents of a nappy”, says Sarah Ditum in The Daily Telegraph. Adele sells herself as being just like us – “but inevitably, massive success means she’s becoming one of them”.
Tomorrow’s world
Paralysed mice have walked again after researchers at Northwestern University in Chicago injected a “self-assembling” gel into their spinal cords, says New Scientist. The gel provided a scaffold that helped cells grow and stimulated nerve regeneration.
Snapshot answer
It’s Nicole Kidman playing Lucille Ball in Aaron Sorkin’s latest biopic, Being the Ricardos, which comes out on 10 December. Many people quibbled when they saw the initial images of Kidman, saying the 54-year-old actress looked nothing like her 1950s counterpart. There was even a petition to replace Kidman with Debra Messing. “Well, guess what?” says Tim Robey in The Daily Telegraph. The first reviews are in, they’re glowing, and Kidman has been tipped for an Oscar nomination.
Noted
An avalanche in Nepal has injured 11 people, says The Himalayan Times. The enormous snow slide continued for 30 minutes and swept through a school in the process. Nobody was killed, but the local yaks weren’t so lucky – 120 have been reported missing.
Quoted
Quoted 17-11
“Confidence makes you stupid, and I’m very confident in that opinion.”
