Common sense is not that common writes Jennifer Selway

 Incidentally, wouldn’t it be fun to be Minister Without Portfolio?

Nobody is going to blame you for anything as they would if you were, say, Minister for Health. Well, she never did anything for health they might say when she’s sacked in the next reshuffle. But nobody says, “She never did anything for portfolios”.

Unforunately McVey, while not being lumbered with a portfolio, is burdened with being “the minister for common sense”, a phrase that the Tories will come to regret, big time.

True, it sounds marvellous. We all want to have common sense, the ability to see through waffle and wokery, to call a spade a spade, and to identify truths that are universally acknowledged by all reasonable people.

In a common-sense world, women would not have penises, men would not menstruate, and schoolchildren would not identify as cats.

Common sense, with its stuff-and-nonsense attitude, ought to cut through the scrappy world of politics. People with common sense coming out of their ears are always cutting to the chase, telling it how it is and not suffering fools gladly.

But they also tend to be bossy, unimaginative, over cautious and dull. What’s more, common sense is not very reliable. For instance common sense – the evidence of our senses – would suggest that the Earth is flattish and that the sun goes round it. But science tells us the opposite.

Common sense told us for thousands of years that people could not fly. But now we have airports. Common sense tells us that the Rolling Stones are too old to be pop stars. And so on. Common sense can look smug and out of touch. A traditional test of a proposition’s commonsensicality is whether you can laugh at it. Ask a four-year-old child if a table can walk by itself and the child will laugh (said one 18th century theologian) thus proving that a walking table is nonsensical.

That was fair enough 250 years ago. But in the age of AI and domestic robots, a walking table barely raises an eyebrow. From the PR point of view, having a minister for common sense will provide ammunition for sneering “progressives” who think they’re cleverer than ordinary voters.

On the Today programme Nick Robinson, voice dripping with contempt, did his best imitation of a querulous Oxford don bullying a terrified undergraduate when he pressed

Conservative party Chairman Richard Holden into defining “common sense”. A ministry for common sense is more Orwellian than anything or Orwell dreamt up. It is dishonest doublethink. It may sound like an invitation to sidestep politics, to promote the idea of shared ground among sensible people outside the Westminster bubble.

But it is really highly political. We all know what we mean by common sense. But to weaponise it, encased in a Whitehall ministry, is such a hideous idea.

Nicky Haslam strikes again

Nicky Haslam, 84, interior designer, Old Etonian and committed snob has issued his latest list of what he considers “common”. He does it every year and has it printed on a tea-towel (by the way, Nicky, I was always told that the phrase “tea-towel” was naff and that the correct phrase is “drying-up cloth”, but we’ll let that pnigass).

This year Haslam’s deliciously venomous hit list includes aperol, the Northern Lights, pride in grown-up children,The Repair Shop and bucket lists. It’s all good fun, very British and designed to give offence to people who have no sense of humour.

The most mysterious no-no this year is “needing house keys”. I’m flummoxed by this. Do the truly posh have staff to open the front door for them or do they have some wondrous app on their phones?

Nigel will probably divide the nation

Under the new Matt Hancock rules of I’m A Celebrity...Get Me Out Of Here! there has to be one contestant who is guaranteed to Divide the Nation and this time it is Nigel Farage. But because I watch Masterchef I shall be more interested in Grace Dent who is one of the regular food critics. Her comfort zone is pushing pan-fried Wagu beef with a red-wine jus around her plate rather than picking unmentionables from a cauldron. Good luck.

Lisa Nandy gets it wrong

Labour’s Lisa Nandy (spellcheck always transforms her to Lisa Nanny which seems spot on) says that Suella Braverman’s letter to the PM is the “latest Tory psychodrama”.

People always get this wrong. Psychodrama is a method of therapy involving role-playing which was developed by shrinks in the 1920s. If we’re talking about the Tories, then the word “drama” will do just fine.

Kim's Skim's goes green

Kim Kardashian has just launched her Skims “ultimate nipple push-up bra” which offers “perfect fullness with a built-in nipple for shock factor”. Are nipples shocking in 2023?

It’s true we don’t see so much of them these days but in the 1970s, when we had all burnt our bras for feminism, you couldn’t escape nipples, poking out under T-shirts and silk blouses.

Some who have road-tested the bra say that strangers feel entitled to give the fake knobs a twiddle which could lead to some unfortunate misunderstandings.

On the plus side women who have had breast surgery think the bra is brilliant.

And congratulations Kim on your timely marketing strategy. In a nod to our preoccupation with climate change the promo video says that wearing the bra means that “no matter how hot it is you’ll always look cold” and “unlike icebergs these [faux nipples] aren’t going anywhere”. Clearly Greta Thunberg has