A week after the story broke, the Government is still struggling to rebut claims that Downing Street broke lockdown rules by hosting parties last Christmas. In interviews, ministers’ denials have sounded less than convincing. One moment, they insist that the parties never took place; the next, they insist that everyone present observed Covid regulations. Essentially they seem to be saying: “No, of course there weren’t any parties. And anyway, the guests followed all the rules.”

It’s rather like the episode of Blackadder Goes Forth in which Baldrick attempts to defend Blackadder from accusations that he has killed and eaten General Melchett’s beloved pet carrier pigeon. “Captain Blackadder definitely did not shoot the delicious, plump-breasted pigeon, sir.”

Even more striking was the response from Dominic Raab, who argued that it was time to draw a line under the story because “the police don’t normally go back and investigate things that happened a year ago”. Given that Mr Raab is the Secretary of State for Justice, this is a significant announcement, which will no doubt be warmly welcomed by the criminal community.

Of course, investigating the claims now might seem like a waste of police time. But members of the public who held parties last Christmas were fined £10,000 each – on order of the Government.

Since the Government is so determined to move on from things that happened a year ago, perhaps Mr Raab should quietly reimburse them all.

Triggered again

Last week I noted that, in order to avoid upsetting its more sensitive undergraduates, Aberdeen University has added trigger warnings to classic works of literature. Readers of Robert Louis Stevenson’s Kidnapped, for example, are warned that it contains “depictions of kidnapping”.

Now, it seems, the trend for trigger warnings is really taking off. Another university has warned students taking a module on “Northern English” that some of the video materials include “strong language, outdated attitudes towards gender, physical violence and discussion of alcohol consumption”.

As it happens, the university is in Liverpool, so the students might have been expected to have some experience of “Northern English” culture already. But perhaps they’ve been warned not to mix with the locals too closely.

I hope the Labour party is taking notes, so that it can provide similar trigger warnings to all candidates selected to stand in “Northern English” seats.

“Inhabitants of ‘Red Wall’ constituencies may express opinions on immigration, the EU and Jeremy Corbyn that many Labour candidates may find upsetting.”

Cracking the Covid code

Lavern Spicer – a prominent Trump supporter and Republican election candidate – appears to believe she has uncovered evidence of an earth-shattering conspiracy. “If you rearrange the letters of ‘delta’ and ‘omicron’,” she warns her supporters, “you get MEDIA CONTROL.”

This is certainly a troubling revelation. Still, there is room for hope. After all, if the pandemic is indeed a hoax perpetrated by a shadowy global elite who are using the media to brainwash the public, it’s very sporting of them to give us helpful clues like this. If I were leading a shadowy global elite, I wouldn’t dream of letting slip our secret plans, not even in the form of an obscure anagram. Frankly, I would take care to keep our secret plans secret. In any case, coming up with clever anagrams is tricky and time-consuming. It hardly seems worth the effort, especially if it leads to one’s secret plans for world domination being exposed and obstructed.

Still, if Hollywood blockbusters have taught us anything, it is that evil geniuses who seek world domination tend to be both recklessly over-confident and extremely vain, so it’s possible that the ones behind the Covid hoax simply couldn’t resist giving away a clue to their secret plans via an anagram of the names of two separate variants, identified six months apart.

My only worry is that Ms Spicer has got the wrong anagram. After all, the letters of delta and omicron can also be rearranged to spell CLARINET DOOM. In recent days, the hot topic on the Telegraph letters page has been the demise of school recorder lessons. So this anagram may be the shadowy global elite’s way of warning us that the clarinet is next to go.

Alternatively, the letters can be rearranged to spell C RONALDO TIME: a clear hint that the Portuguese goal machine is about to revive Manchester United’s season. Have the shadowy global elite bet vast sums on Ralf Rangnick’s men pulling off a shock triumph in the Champions League? It would be naive to rule it out.

At any rate, we should avoid calling Ms Spicer a conspiracy theorist. Because she would doubtless retort that that cruel slur is an anagram of ATROCITY CENSORSHIP.

Honestly. This shadowy global elite are simply too clever for their own good.