ANDREW PIERCE: Now slimline Boris Johnson has a go at being vegan 

Those wondering if Boris Johnson could make a U-turn on his long-standing advocacy of a No Deal Brexit have been intrigued by another radical change of mind he has recently undergone.

For years, he’s been a rampant carnivore, admitting to indulging in late-night ‘binges of chorizo’ that have meant he has rarely weighed under 15st since his university days.

But now the lifelong trencherman has confided in a fellow Tory MP that he is ‘toying with going vegan’. He explained: ‘I’m trying it out.’ His decision to forsake meat, eggs and dairy products is due to the influence of his 30-year-old girlfriend Carrie Symonds.

Not only has the former head of press at Tory Party HQ and passionate environmentalist bent 54-year-old Boris’s ear over his diet (he says he lost 12lb in two weeks), she has encouraged him to cut his hair, dress more neatly and embrace surprising new interests ranging from tigers and pandas, to wanting more electric-powered taxis.

How different to the Johnson of old. In 2008, for example, he challenged environmentalists, saying: ‘If they seriously believe that I am going to give up eating meat — in the hope of reducing the temperature of the planet — then they must be totally barmy.’

Proof that champagne socialism isn’t dead. Chuka Umunna MP, who defected from Labour to pro-EU Change UK, has declared in the Commons Register of Interests that he was given a case of wine valued at £486.

Chuka Umunna MP has declared in the Commons Register of Interests that he was given a case of wine worth £

Give Greg a big hand!

One person who never misses the Chelsea Flower Show, which ended on Saturday, is local Tory MP Greg Hands. 

‘It’s always an honour to meet the Queen,’ he says. He recalls in 2005, his first year as MP for Chelsea and Fulham, being introduced to Prince Philip there. ‘He saw my poorly executed bow and asked: “Are you new?” ’ 

Labour’s Baroness Prosser made an unsisterly attack on Gisela Stuart after the former Labour MP was made the chair of Wilton Park, an international diplomatic forum. 

Prosser said Stuart, as chair of Vote Leave, had headed an organisation ‘with a duty to separate the UK from the rest of Europe’.

Prosser should do her homework. Wilton Park was set up in 1946 to promote dialogue between British and German diplomats after the war. 

Gisela was born in Germany, moving to Britain in her 20s. Impeccable credentials! 

Confession of the week: Lib Dem-voting Europhile Lord (Michael) Heseltine said: ‘This country’s economy is doing significantly better than you might hope.’ How true — and so much better than he predicted after Britain voted to leave the EU. 

A Beeb blunder 

The first episode of BBC2’s five-part series Thatcher: A Very British Revolution was compelling. But there was at least one basic error. Mrs T was described as having led the country for ten years. In fact, it was 11-and-a-half years. Not the first time that Lefties at the BBC have got it wrong about the Iron Lady. 

Auctioned at the Tories’ Spring Lunch last week: a painting titled Storm Approaching. Approaching? The storm has arrived for the party. Batten down the hatches! 

 Awful MPs? You might think that…

Lord (Michael) Dobbs, author of the Westminster thriller House Of Cards, told the Upper House the Government must ‘rebuild that trust which binds our constitution and which we politicians have thrown away’ by the failure to leave the EU.

Fellow Tory Lord Young of Cookham cheekily replied by asking whether Dobbs himself was partly to blame for this erosion of public trust. He wondered if the writer’s infamous depiction of the Government Chief Whip Francis Urquhart (played by Ian Richardson, left) ‘as a duplicitous, homicidal adulterer’ had enhanced trust in their profession.