I SUSPECT that Justin Trudeau’s cringing apology for blacking himself up wearing a turban ‘blinded by his own white privilege’ has done him rather more harm than the original offence.

It was a themed ‘Arabian Nights’ fancy-dress party for heaven’s sake!

It comes to something when you can’t dress-up as Aladdin without attracting the opprobrium of the ‘great and good’. He would have done better to have said it was an entirely acceptable bit of fun.

I once went to a ‘Blues Brothers’ themed fancy-dress party as James Brown. I went to some trouble to be as authentic as possible. I can assure readers of this column that I have no intention of apologising.

Constituents often write to me having been infuriated by some latest absurdity of political correctness. I tell them that the best response is simply to laugh at it.

Here’s one to amuse them: last week academics attended a conference at Roehampton University entitled “Thinking beyond Transversal Transfeminisms” and wearing badges informing each other if they were happy to chat, or prefer not to be spoken to at all.

Barking - or what?

n Apparently, I have received an offer from the BREXIT Party. I have had no direct contact, I only know about it because a journalist asked me for my reaction.

The substance of the offer, as I understand it, is that if I pledge only to support and vote for a no-deal Brexit, then I will not be opposed by a BREXIT Party candidate at the next election.

Sorry, but no-deal.

Apart from my labour in their interests, the principal thing that I owe to my constituents is my judgement. I need to exercise that judgement in circumstances that develop unpredictably and I mustn’t be fettered by entering into a commitment to a particular lobby.

I support Boris in his determination to leave the EU at the end of October whether we can get an acceptable deal or not (It isn’t clear to me however, how this can be achieved given the law passed by our REMAINER Parliament earlier this month which binds our PM to seek a further extension of EU membership).

To those who are opposed in principle to any deal, and demand my commitment to that end, I remind them that it is my job to represent all my constituents and not just them. They tell me that in the referendum they didn’t vote for a deal, they just voted to leave. Well, only they know exactly what they voted for. 57 per cent of my constituents voted to leave, but I suspect that most of them did so in the expectation of some sort of deal with the EU. At one point during the referendum even Nigel Farage was touting a deal along the lines of that enjoyed by Norway.

Notwithstanding the very serious drawbacks with Mrs May’s Withdrawal Agreement that I detailed in this column, I stand by my decision to vote for it and to leave the EU on March 29. It would have been better had we done so, rather than to have had to endure the current uncertainty about ever achieving BREXIT at all.