Mark Andrews: Aliens, ski-jumpers with big packages, and our brave new world under Zack Polanski

How will you be celebrating? I was thinking along the lines of a vegan-friendly street party with Polly Toynbee, maybe raising a glass of Fair Trade lemongrass juice to Greta Thunberg. But my fellow travellers told me that was a bit old-fashioned. Maybe glue ourselves to one of those yellow buses or something.

I'm talking, of course, about the Green Party's triumph in the Gorton and Denton by-election. If that is anything to go by, we could soon be seeing the madcap boob-hypnotist Zack Polanski flashing his snaggle-toothed smile on the steps of Downing Street, announcing his plans to increase shoplifting and a jobs revolution in the heroin trade.

OK, I exaggerate slightly, but not much. Polanski has previously said that prosecuting shoplifters equates to 'criminalising inequality', that all drugs should be made legal, and that immigration controls should be lifted as part of a 'world without borders'. He also believes all undocumented migrants should be given instant free access to the NHS and benefits system, but unlike people born in the country, they shouldn't need to prove they are seeking work to qualify.

If all this happens, I suspect we will all look back rather fondly on the gentler days of Liz Truss's mini-budget and Sir Keir Starmer's stirring speeches about fixing the foundations and his plan for change. Maybe there will even be a touch of nostalgia for David Cameron's Big Society, Tony Blair's 'regular kind of guy' routine, and John Major's lectures about 'subsidiarity'. OK, maybe not.

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The big winner of course, is Andy Burnham, who has managed to boost his street cred no end without the inconvenience of having to put himself to voters. 

No doubt the PM thought that stopping Burnham from standing would prevent a mutiny. But a shrewder operator would not only have allowed Burnham to stand, but given him his full-throated endorsement, stood shoulder-to-shoulder with him at every photo opportunity. And told everyone how is 'laser-like focus' was honed on bringing his old mate back into the Cabinet at the earliest possible opportunity. 

And then see how popular he was.

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The World Anti Doping Agency has been asked to investigate claims that some of the participants at the Winter Olympics were injecting acid serum into their, ahem, gentleman bits, to give them more lift in ski jumping events. 

I never knew that part of the anatomy was so important in ski jumping.

I've obviously missed my true vocation. 

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"Aliens are real, but I've never seen one," said Barack Obama in a message on social media. 

There speaks a man who's never got the night bus home from Wolverhampton.