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Henry Bolton: my part in his downfall, after he goes on the Underground with Jo Marney

Sam Leith: Daniel Hambury
Sam Leith: Daniel Hambury

Adolf Hitler: My Part in his Downfall was the title the late Spike Milligan gave to his 1971 memoirs. As I watched Ukip’s latest implosion yesterday, I found myself wondering whether Henry Bolton: My Part in his Downfall would have quite the same staying power on the bestseller lists. Nevertheless, I felt a small sense of ownership as the story unfolded.

We were on the Tube last week, my old friend Tanya and me, on the way home from watching Network at the National. It was a fine show — and Bryan Cranston grabbed our shoulders, so we didn’t think at that point the evening could much improve. But then I did a double-take.

“Psst!” I said to Tanya. “Opposite us. That’s that Ukip guy, wossisname! And that’s his supposedly ex-girlfriend, wossername!” We goggled and muttered, like the slightly incompetent ex-gossip columnists we both are. And we thought: we should pap them. Tanya whipped out her phone. Cue much pretending to take selfies… and bang, she got it.

The shot was a beaut. I have a strong suspicion our victims were on to us. Bolton was staring glumly at the floor like someone on his third written warning waiting outside the HR manager’s office. And Marney — fuchsia of coat and hollow of eye and cheek — was glaring sullenly at us like a resentful stoat. Tanya, being a more hard-nosed professional than I am, had within an hour of leaving the Tube flogged her snap to a national newspaper.

The problem with Bolton’s situation, as I see it, is not the fact that he was fraternising so soon with his ex-girlfriend. True love is not a tap that can be turned off neatly at will. The heart and trousers want what the heart and trousers want.

Nor, indeed, is hanging out with a closet racist what threw his viability as Ukip’s leader into question. One of the big things about leading Ukip is that you get to hang out with closet racists. It may not be explicit in the job description but it’s part of the package. Closet racism is to Ukip as the secret blend of 11 different herbs and spices is to KFC: not in the title, but vital.

But, look, you ask in a party leader for a certain media savvy; a certain self-interested cunning. If you’ve been all over the newspapers and social media because of your affair with a younger woman, and if you’ve then very publicly dumped said younger woman, going out in public with her is just asking for trouble. And climbing on to a Tube train with her — a confined space filled with bored people carrying cameraphones — is not so much asking for trouble as poking it with a stick.

Even Nadine Dorries, in such circumstances, would have had the good sense to splash out on a taxi. Did they decide not to take an Uber, given its unfortunate collocation with “Deutschland” and “Alles”? Did they hesitate to climb in a black cab because ..? Well, I’ll leave it there. Anyway, like a High Barnet train, the next Ukip leader will be along in three minutes.

Take a tip, there’s no such thing as a ‘reasonable’ bet

Moves are afoot to slash the maximum bet available on fixed-odds betting terminals (“the crack cocaine of gambling”) from £100 to between £2 and £50. Most of us would agree this can only be a good thing. Even those who play the things will get more value for money, as it will take them that much longer to lose all their savings.

But anonymous “friends” of Matt Hancock, the minister concerned, brief that “his attitude is very negative because it takes money from reasonable, mature betting, like on the horses”.

Come off it! Betting on horses is no more “reasonable” or “mature” than betting on algorithms. For every form-studying, breeder-researching chinstroker there must be 10 punters who choose the horse with the funniest name. And anyway — unlike the unpredictable mix of horseflesh, going, temperament, jockey and dope that determine the winner of a horse-race — at least with an algorithm you know what you’re getting.

Scarlett’s words mangle her message

I think highly of Scarlett Johansson. And she was cheered to the echo at the Women’s March at the weekend when she praised the #MeToo movement and declared: “It gives me hope that we are moving toward a place where our sense of equality can truly come from within ourselves.”

So at the risk of being a grouch, I ask: what on earth does that sentence mean? “Moving toward a place”, indeed. And shouldn’t your sense of equality come (“truly” or not) from outside yourself — because you can see you’re materially equal, rather than just feeling it? This sort of Hollywood self-help woo-woo is the enemy of social change, not its ally.

* The former TV star and Russian presidential hopeful Ksenia Sobchak describes Vladimir Putin’s reaction when she told him she intended to run against him for office. “Putin’s very unemotional,” she says. “It’s hard to guess anything from his reactions.”

Apparently, after a long pause, he told her: “It’s your decision but you also have to understand the responsibility that any decision carries with it.”

She says she wasn’t exactly sure what he meant. I’m not sure, either. But — brr — none of my guesses ends well for Sobchak.