Jeremy Clarkson may be angry – but he shouldn’t be surprised. It’s hardly a shock that planning officers have rejected his application to build a 60-seat cafe and 70-space car park at his Cotswolds farm. The reason is simple.

Britain is a nation of Nimbys.

The term may have been coined as an insult. But there’s no shame in being instinctively protective of our countryside, and wary of any threat to disfigure it. Indeed, I suspect that this instinct has always been part of our national character – no matter how far back in time you go.

“I say, darling, have you heard about this monstrous new brutalist eyesore they’ve put up just outside the village?”

“Yes, dear. I believe they’re calling it ‘Stonehenge’.”

“Well, I don’t like it. It’s so hideously modern. That Welsh bluestone they’ve used is completely out of keeping with the character of the area. Think of the damage it must be doing to local hut prices. Also, it’s lowering the tone of the neighbourhood by attracting undesirables. All these long-haired, bearded hippies holding all-night raves.”

“They’re called druids, dear, and they’re marking the summer solstice.”

“I don’t care what they call themselves. I’m going to write a stiff letter of complaint to the council. Just as soon as paper, pens, envelopes, stamps, the postal service and the council have been invented.”

As a matter of fact, we know that “Nimbyism” in this country dates back at least as far as the early 18th century. According to a researcher at Birkbeck, University of London, a group of householders in the 1720s organised a petition to complain about the hangings of criminals. They had no objection to the hangings themselves – they just didn’t want them to be carried out in their particular neighbourhood, that was all. You can imagine what the petition might have said.

“We appreciate that the Government made a manifesto commitment to carry out 300,000 new executions a year. But why on earth does it have to carry them out on our precious green spaces, instead of on existing brownfield sites? Quite frankly, heads must roll. Although not round here, obviously.”

As far as is known, Jeremy Clarkson has no plans to carry out executions on his farm, but none the less, the principle is the same. Local planning officers say they are merely trying to prevent any “intrusive and harmful impact on the character of the area”. And while Mr Clarkson may not like the decision, I’m sure that, deep down, he can at least understand it.

After all, in 2020 he told a radio station that he has always voted for the Conservatives. And what is a Conservative, if not someone who wants to conserve?

A vintage scoop

There’s no doubting the stand-out detail from the Telegraph’s terrific scoop yesterday. To stock up for a lockdown-busting party last April, a member of Downing Street staff was dispatched to the nearest supermarket to fill a suitcase with bottles of wine.

A suitcase. That’s the killer. Every great political scandal always has an absurd visual image that somehow symbolises the scale of the excess. For the expenses scandal of 2009, it was the duck house. For the long-running sleaze scandal of the 1990s, it was David Mellor’s Chelsea kit. And now, for the Downing Street lockdown parties scandal, it’s a suitcase of wine.

Pity the poor spin doctors who get tasked with dreaming up a plausible excuse for this one. Of course, we know that Downing Street staff were marking the departure of a colleague. So perhaps they could try to claim that the suitcase of wine was not actually consumed on the premises. It was simply a leaving present.

“Here, it’s whatsisface’s last day on Friday. What shall we get him? Amazon vouchers? Personalised mug? Carriage clock?”

“No, I’ve got a better idea. Take a wheeled suitcase to the 24-hour Co-op on the Strand and fill it with as many £7-10 bottles of wine as you can. Like all of us in this building, our dear colleague has scrupulously observed all of the Government’s lockdown restrictions throughout the pandemic, and attended absolutely no parties. So, to make up for it, we’ll present him with several parties’ worth of wine. Which, in line with current restrictions, he will of course drink at home, on his own.”

When will the Left dump this juvenile jargon?

As interventions go, it was hardly the most helpful. Yesterday morning, in an attempt to defend her colleague Barry Gardiner, Labour’s Emily Thornberry described him as a longstanding “comrade”.

Given that Mr Gardiner received £425,000 in donations from a spy acting on behalf of the Chinese Communist Party, the choice of word is unfortunate. Frankly, though, it would be no better in any other context. The year is 2022 – and yet the British Left are still using the word “comrade” with a straight face.

At its annual conference each autumn, Labour often seems less like a political party, and more like a historical reenactment society. The hall is crammed with well-spoken, middle-class British people who sound as if they’re cosplaying as Russian revolutionaries. As well as addressing each other as “comrades”, they constantly bark “Solidarity!” at the tops of their voices. And then, at the end, they all rise to sing The Red Flag, with its crazed lyrics about “traitors” and “our martyred dead”.

They love to mock Jacob Rees-Mogg. Yet they themselves choose to wallow in a romanticised vision of the distant past. And not only that: it’s the distant past of another country.

‘Way of the World’ is a twice-weekly satirical look at the headlines while aiming to mock the absurdities of the modern world. It is published at 7am every Tuesday and Saturday