HARRY COLE: Fresh storm over the Prime Minister of St Kitts and Nevis stopped with wads of cash

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When David Cameron made Denzil Douglas, the former Prime Minister of St Kitts and Nevis, a member of the Queen’s gilded Privy Council, he lavished praise on the servant of the Commonwealth.

But last month, The Mail on Sunday revealed Dr Douglas had been stopped at Gatwick in November trying to leave the country with £70,000 in mysterious cash. 

It caused a storm in the Caribbean paradise, where the good doctor is standing for election again.

Now new information reaches me that will cause a headache back in Britain. 

The Mail on Sunday revealed Dr Douglas had been stopped at Gatwick in November trying to leave the country with £70,000 in mysterious cash. It caused a storm in the Caribbean paradise, where the good doctor is standing for election again

Border Force sources say Dr Douglas attempted to use his position as a ‘senior politician’ to berate border agents, accusing them of being ‘confused’ for searching him.

He insisted his luggage contained no cash, so a tense scene emerged when he was asked to explain the presence of several bundles of US dollars and other money in white and brown envelopes, as well as five other wrapped bundles of UK notes totalling £1,000.

Given the National Crime Agency, the UK’s FBI, is probing where the cash is from, is such behaviour becoming of a member of Her Majesty’s Most Honourable Privy Council?

With clubbable Rob Oxley off to empire-build at a souped-up new Foreign Office and International Aid department, Boris Johnson has turned to Fleet Street to find his new Press Secretary. 

I hear dogged Daily Mail man Jack Doyle, a hard-lunching scoop-getter of the old-school variety, has been lined up for the relentless job. 

And good timing for a poacher-turned-gamekeeper, given Downing Street’s relationship with Westminster’s press pack has had a rocky start to the year, with hacks very suspicious about changes to Government briefings and heavy-handed leak inquiries spooking Whitehall sources.

Tory Crispin Blunt has sent letters to fellow MPs seeking votes in his bid to head the Foreign Affairs Committee. 

To Labour ranks, he plays up his opposition to Government policy on nuclear missiles, yet to Tories he professes: ‘I want the Government to do this well.’ 

Such diplomacy should serve him well! 

The more you read of the endless Left-wing witterings of a young Sir Keir Starmer, the more you realise he is far from the moderate Labour saviour the Right of the party is desperately seeking

The more you read of the endless Left-wing witterings of a young Sir Keir Starmer, the more you realise he is far from the moderate Labour saviour the Right of the party is desperately seeking. 

In a particularly turgid article for the Haldane Society of Socialist Lawyers in 1995, the Young Turk declared property rights should be abolished. 

Lawyer Sir Keir, then 33, railed: ‘We could do worse than to begin by dismantling those common law rules governing the property entitlements of private parties which for almost a thousand years judges have been happy to regard as pre-political norms.’ 

Next month, Jeremy Corbyn plans a Shadow Cabinet meeting in a Leave-voting area of the North East to show that Labour realise why they were pummelled at the Election. 

But as it’s planned for a Thursday, traditionally the day MPs go back to constituencies – and a long way from London – I hear disloyal comrades are already preparing their excuses. 

The whips are having a ball

No kid gloves in the Whips Office where the Chief Whip, Mark Spencer, has been proudly showing MPs his new toy: a burdizzo.

Those of a sensitive nature will want to avoid looking that one up in the dictionary, but this medieval-looking device is meant to be used on bulls. 

It’s a marked escalation in the menacing tactics used by the office – former Chief Whip Gavin Williamson famously kept a pet tarantula called Cronus.

Come back Cronus, all is forgiven!

Those of a sensitive nature will want to avoid looking that one up in the dictionary, but this medieval-looking device is meant to be used on bulls