HOW I sympathised this week with my good friend Rt Hon Sir Desmond Swayne, MP for New Forest West (and runner-up here in the North Wiltshire selection battle in 1996. Cheers, Dessie.)

An out and out loyalist, he had just gone to print in his weekly column in the local paper justifying and praising the Budget’s National Insurance hike, only to come into the Chamber to hear the Chancellor reverse it in one of the most screeching of hand-brake U-turns in modern political history.

No amount of persuasion would make them shred the whole edition as Dessie would have liked.

It just shows that you should speak up for what you believe to be right no matter what the Whips or Conservative Central Office may be saying.

Maybe that’s why he’s a Privy Councillor and Knight of the Realm (although I was honoured this week to be named as a ‘Younger Brother’ of Trinity House, the superb organisation which inter alia runs the UK’s lighthouses).

Meanwhile, Mr Trump haughtily cold-shouldered Mrs Merkel, ludicrously accused Cheltenham’s GCHQ of hacking into his phones during the election campaign, and was prevented from implementing his immigration pledge by a local judge in Hawaii.

Is he really the most powerful man in the world, and the Leader of the West?

Her Majesty’s finest meanwhile, tiring of investigating the long-dead Sir Edward Heath (if guilty of paedophilia it must be proved beyond reasonable doubt, not just smeared and hinted at), turned their attention to the complex accounting matter of whether or not the costs of the Tory election battle bus in Thanet South should be declared locally or nationally. An important matter, especially if you are a murderer or burglar who is in the meanwhile getting off scot-free.

In the same week the Scots dropped their ambition to join the EU discovering, like Groucho Marx, that "he wouldn’t join a club that would have him". They are turning their attention to the long-forgotten EFTA apparently. Their plan for a second referendum (‘we lost, so we had better try again’) was squashed by Mrs May, at least until after Brexit, causing no end of moaning and whingeing from the SNP annual conference. They should beware an English backlash if they bang on too much about it.

In all of this week’s news, there is only one thing which really matters. Figures out show that there are 745,000 people claiming unemployment benefit, and 750,000 registered vacancies. So we are as close as we statistically can be to full employment. The country is booming, and we should be glad of it, and pay off our debts against the rainy day which will doubtless sooner or later reappear. 2016 was only the second year since 1945 that we have lost no soldiers in combat (1968 was the other), our sporting prowess is second to none, and even the weather has held up pretty well.

So the world may be in an incomprehensible muddle; but in the midst of it we in Britain are doing rather well, and we should be glad of it.