Happy New Year!

Please forgive me if you feel it is a bit late in the day but it is my first chance to say it in the Mail. And we are only week 2 in 2019 so I don’t feel too bad.

I hope you had a great Christmas. As ever the Farron family decamped to my father-in-law’s house for a few days.

As is now traditional we all got to watch Home Alone 2. For me Tim Curry and his hotel team give it the edge over Home Alone but that is a great film too. FYI Home Alone 3 and 4 are abominations to be avoided at all costs.

I even managed to make a New Year trip to Ewood Park and would you believe it Blackburn won.

And now to ensure we start 2019 on the best foot possible Mrs Farron and I are doing what is called RED January. I know that sounds a bit like a Labour Party election campaign but RED stands for Run Every Day and so far we have.

So as you can imagine it was more than disappointing to head back to London after the parliamentary recess to find nothing much has changed. The Conservative Party is busy fighting with itself. Ministers are more interested in positioning themselves to take over from Mrs May than actually doing what they are paid good money to do. The sight of Sajid Javid flying back from his £800 a night safari in South Africa to take charge of things because 40 refugees from Syria and Iran had tried to cross the Channel in a couple of rubber dinghies was one of the more disgusting ones I have seen in my time in politics.

Let’s pass over Chris Grayling and his inability to control drones flying over our airports. We all know from our experience with Northern Rail that Mr Grayling is one of the most ineffectual ministers there has ever been.

As if that wasn’t bad enough. I also returned to find that the Labour Party, the official party of opposition in the House of Commons, are not really up to doing any opposing. All they are really interested in calling for an election that is unlikely to happen under the Fixed Term Parliament Act. Perhaps that is why they are only neck and neck with the Conservative Party in all the opinion polls, despite the fact that the Conservatives are a complete disaster.

But I’m determined not to let this drag me down. I have so much to keep me busy.

This running seems to be doing me some good!