Tice Reformed Nigel Farage’s latest attempt to break his general election duck – seven innings without troubling the scorers – was the week’s big moment. Thoughts please for the now former Reform leader Richard Tice, who handed Farage the party reins after almost single-handedly fronting, funding and running it right up to the moment that anyone actually cared. Not since the tribulations of Wallace and Gromit has a bafflingly devoted sidekick been so mistreated by a nationally renowned oddball. But Gromit had the excuse of being both a dog and a fictional character – neither of which Tice can realistically fall back on. The only way is Essex A few alarm bells ringing at CCHQ after Tory chairman Richard Holden, ostensibly in charge of the Conservative effort to get lots of people elected, secured his party’s nomination in Basildon and Billericay after seeing off precisely zero other contenders. Holden previously represented the now abolished seat of North West Durham and pleaded recently that he was “bloody loyal to the north east”. It turns out that by “north east”, he actually meant south Essex – an easy mistake. Ideally, the ever-competitive Holden may have preferred a constituency with no opponents or indeed voters, allowing him to dispense with the inconvenient democracy thing completely. Taxing times Laughs all round at the nerdy boffins at the Institute for Fiscal Studies, who have embarrassed themselves by suggesting that the parties should have an “open and robust” discussion about how they would actually pay for quaint, luxury institutions such as schools and hospitals. Have they not been keeping up with election 24? If you haven’t got a made-up “tax bombshell” or a confected policy announcement with the word “lock” in it, we really don’t want to know. Back to your abacuses. Bad press Congrats to Liz Truss, who is smashing it on the campaign trail - the “it” in question being the Conservative party’s plea that she go quietly. Whatever her media team hoped the headline might be after her big local newspaper interview, we can infer that “Truss: ‘I’m not worst PM ever’” wasn’t in their top five dream outcomes. In hindsight, perhaps such an intriguing election strategy might have worked for other politicians recovering from a political implosion. If only former Labour MP Keith Vaz had thought to sit down with his local paper and declare: “It was just the once that I implied to those Romanian male escorts that I was a washing machine salesman who could purchase drugs.” You live, you learn.