Nelson's Column: Red-faced Theresa May gets caught out by a breach of Truss

Theresa May settled her female Cabinet ministers into London’s opulent Goring hotel for Monday’s ladies’ night.

And word spread the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge were upstairs.

It was from Belgravia’s Goring that Prince William and Kate Middleton headed off to Westminster Abbey to marry on April 29th eight years ago.

So it was fitting they should celebrate their wedding anniversary there with an intimate dinner away from prying eyes.

Liz Truss almost blew their date night.

The Treasury Secretary decided, like some Costa del Sol sunseeker, to ask a waiter to snap the Cabinet women on her mobile.

And, as British holidaymakers do, she plastered it over social media.

Had Kate and Wills inadvertently wandered past they would have been trussed up in Liz’s selfie.

Thanks to her idiocy the world now knows the PM and her top women were lavishly wined and dined by Lubov Chernukhin, wife of a former Vladimir Putin crony.

She won them for £135,000 in a Tory auction.

Only a minister with the political nous of a gerbil would advertise taking Russian dosh.

In a hotel with £2,500 a night rooms.

In the week voters went to the polls .

Mrs Chernukhin has form for this. Five years ago she stumped up £160,000 to play tennis with David Cameron and Boris Johnson.

The then PM got it in the neck for that…which should have been a lesson to this one. Especially after Russians poisoned Salisbury.

The PM’s Wednesday entertainment was sacking Gavin Williamson as Defence Secretary causing more chaos.

In the week voters went to the polls.

If Williamson is the innocent he claims Mrs May will have to quit instantly over her false accusation.

If he’s as culpable of leaking State secrets as she professes then he should go quietly.

And his children, on whose lives he so casually staked his innocence, might like to disown their dad should he be found to have lied.

National politics is a shambles, and I feel for hard-working local councillors of both main parties who lost their seats through no fault of their own.

Walsall Council leader Mike Bird said the Tories won the town “despite” Theresa May, adding: “She hasn’t helped us make any gains at all.”

Returning officers in Rugby, Ipswich, and North Norfolk reported hundreds of spoiled ballot papers with Brexit scrawled over them.

A councillor I know spent the campaign telling voters: “Think bins not Brexit.”

While others emphasised local government’s three Ps – planning, parking and potholes.

None of which Kate and William have to worry about.

Nor the well fed and liberally watered ladies of ladies’ night come to that.

ID cards are taking a liberty

Whenever I think the introduction of identity cards is dead and buried they spring back to life like credit card-sized zombies.

Well-meaning but mistaken Labour peer Dale Campbell-Savours is usually behind it, and appalling crime figures were the catalyst this time.

Dale said that if only all of us carried ID cards with perhaps our fingerprints and a spot of DNA on them police could do so much more.

Home Office minister Susan Williams put him in his place.

She said: “An ID card goes against civil liberties.

“Identity should be provided for the purpose for which it’s needed, not for everything.”

I couldn’t agree more, Sue. I carry masses of ID. But because I want what it provides – credit cards for money, passport for holidays, security pass for Parliament, driving licence to pootle about in my motor.

But, lordy, I draw a line at being forced by law to carry a piece of plastic just to walk around my own country.

Brexit breakdown

Now Chris Heaton-Harris is an ex-Brexit minister, he’s back tweeting jokes to make you groan.

So bad are some, comic Jim Davidson warned him: “Don’t pack in the day job, mate.”

But it came too late to stop him quitting.

Chris’s latest offering: “Hi. Do you have the wifi password?

Barman: You need to buy a drink first.

Chris: Coffee then please. And the password?

Barman: You need to buy a drink first. No spaces, all lowercase.”

Publicans and shopkeepers are now turning their humour on Brexit with signs like this one spotted by a reader outside a confectioners in Castleton, Derbyshire.

Or this doing the rounds on social media…

If you spot better, email me a picture to nigel.nelson@sundaymirror.co.uk

Fifty good British pounds for each published.

It never rains but it pours

Relations between Theresa May and Brexiteer Tory backbencher Andrew Bridgen have hit a new low.

The MP tells me: ”It’s got so bad that if the PM told me it was raining I would have to go outside to have a look.

“And I wouldn’t be taking my umbrella.”

Parliament can go to blazes

MPs and peers are terrified the kind of blaze which ravaged Notre Dame could happen to Parliament.

More so when House of Lords Services boss Lord Laming revealed there are no water sprinklers on the roof. Yikes.

There are. though, smoke detectors and the building is divided into compartments to stop fire spreading.

Former Labour Home Secretary John Reid sniffed: “I’m sceptical about compartmentalisation.

“They had that on the Titanic.”