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Gourmand fragrances – or perfumes that smell good enough to eat – are all the rage right now.

It used to be that only sweet scents like vanilla and caramel counted as gourmand perfumes, but now there’s a huge range of savoury elements out there to play with, too (hello Tom Ford).

So, whether you’ve got a sweet tooth nostril, or you’re more into savoury stuff, here are some of the best gourmand scents out there for you to choose from.

John Oxley is a consultant, writer, and broadcaster. His SubStack is Joxley Writes.

While the Starmer project limps on from crisis to scandal, the Prime Minister’s days as Labour leader seem numbered.

His cabinet might still be behind him, but given the prospect of bruising local elections, he seems more useful to them as a human shield than as a PM.

Starmer’s route to political survival is narrow and requires a level of good judgment that has so far eluded him. Few would bet on the PM being in place by the end of the year; fewer still would bet on seeing out his term.  His eventual defenestration will emphasise a new trend in British politics: the short tenure of top officeholders.

If Starmer goes over the summer, there’s a chance he will have served less time in Number 10 than Rishi Sunak. Should he fall by mid-July, we will have had 7 Prime Ministers in a decade, counting from the last days of the Cameron ministry. This would be a record unseen since the 1820s and the tumultuous days of the Reform Act, Catholic emancipation, and the Corn Laws. Even if one ignores the precise dates and records, it represents a significant change in modern British politics.

Since the fall of Cameron, no Prime Minister has completed a full electoral term. Each of his successors has run out of political road before then. Most have been done in by their own party when their political capital was exhausted. Only Rishi Sunak was ousted by the public. Perhaps even more remarkably, Edward Heath was the last Prime Minister to enter and exit Downing Street via an election. It appears that two or three years of leadership is becoming the new norm.

Plenty has been written about why that is.

The more generous assessments point to the difficulties of running modern Britain, a country where growth has stalled, demography is placing greater demands on the state, and there are few politically easy answers. Others have pointed to lacklustre politicians. For each of the names in the last decade, it is easy to point to the personal and political misjudgements that undid them. The true reason is likely a combination of both – difficult circumstances often played badly.

Whatever the reason, the rapid cycling of Prime Ministers raises questions about the stability of government and policy. If short tenures, often less than an electoral cycle, become the norm, this would challenge how we conduct politics. These are real issues of legitimacy, of how government operates, and of how those who rely on it respond. Understanding them is important for how our politics functions in an era of increased instability.

Whenever there is a change of PM, oppositions like to crow about an “unelected” leader taking over, constitutionally, they are misguided. At the technical level, we elect MPs, who, in turn, provide confidence to a Prime Minister appointed by the monarch. There is no mechanism for directly electing a Prime Minister, and no illegitimacy in one who has never faced a popular vote. Yet at the policy level, there are real reasons to be sceptical about this system.

The collapse of a leader generally suggests that they have failed. Support within their own party is generally a proxy for support in the wider country. Leaders are ousted when they begin to smell like electoral oblivion, either because they or their policies have foundered. Their successor will be expected to change tack, re-evaluate what was failing and do something better. But this, in turn, raises a question about the scope of their mandate and the extent to which they may deviate from the original manifesto.

This is more than a theoretical problem.

New legislative agendas must pass through Parliament, including the Lords. A lack of public endorsement and the protection afforded by the Salisbury Convention make them easier to amend and to block. A PM without a personal mandate may struggle to deliver convincing change, even when there is public demand for it. Theresa May serves as a stark reminder of what happens when someone attempts to lead without a mandate. She struggled to achieve a consensus on Brexit and failed further when she lost an election to secure one.

The economic challenge is different. A change of leader likely means a new Chancellor and a new fiscal direction. There are few constitutional brakes on that, provided the government has the parliamentary numbers to get a Budget passed and avoid a governmental collapse. It does, however, present a challenge for businesses that rely on government direction to make decisions.

Here, stability is a huge advantage. Everyone is, of course, aware of the democratic cycle and the reality that things can shift every five years or so. Chronic leadership instability shortens this time span. This creates difficulty for anyone trying to plan and direct investment. If it takes two or three years to develop an idea into a concrete outcome, rapid changes in the political situation can disrupt it. If the entire fiscal approach might change within the same timescale, everything becomes inherently riskier.

The same problem affects the public sector as well. We already know that state services are slow to implement change. Part of this is inertia; part of it is the reality that these are large organisations that take time to adapt to changing priorities and policies. Parliamentary terms allowed for this; effectively cutting them in half does not. This is more disruptive than the usual ebb and flow of ministerial changes, with a new PM likely to have different areas of interest and focus, which are rolled out before previous initiatives have properly bedded in.

There is a risk that we are drifting into an era of provisional Prime Ministers, and, consequently, temporary politics. Stability is self-reinforcing. Leaders who hold power for a credible period of time can deliver results, and doing so extends their legitimacy. The most consequential leaders of modern history are those who have achieved successive terms in power. The opposite appears to be true as well. Bad government causes instability, which in turn undermines governance further.

Britain’s constitutional flexibility is usually an advantage. Indeed, the rapid change of Prime Ministers is itself a result of this. Leaders do not remain in office once their moral authority is eroded, eking out a full term despite being a political lame duck. But it comes at a cost, and a sense of Prime Ministers as disposable undermines government authority, with the public, parliament, and business poorly served by changes in direction coming every couple of years.

These rapid-fire changes perhaps reflect the conditions we are in, and those who have ended up trying to manage them. If every political career ends in failure, it is striking how those that were once measured in decades now last a few years, and that time at the top has become fleeting rather than a sustained platform for delivery. Our system allows leaders to fall; it does not require them to be disposable. If tenures are shrinking, it is a sign not of constitutional weakness but of repeated political misjudgement.

As another premiership falters, it is perhaps worth thinking of why we end up in this situation so often, and the wider costs it brings.

Cllr Heather Williams is Leader of the South Cambridgeshire District Council.

If you want to make a difference, you have to get involved. I’ve always believed that, which is why I’m determined to play my part in local government – and to make it work better for residents.

I’ve been Leader of the Opposition at South Cambridgeshire District Council since 2020. Over that time, residents have faced plenty of challenges, both nationally and locally. While there’s only so much any of us can do about national issues, at a local level, my group and I work hard to stand up for the people we represent. That’s why we’ve campaigned successfully against the Cambridge congestion charge, and more recently, why we’ve been calling out the council’s four-day working week.

Let’s be clear about what this actually is. The four-day week at South Cambs is not compressed hours. It’s full-time pay for part-time work. Staff contracted for 37 hours a week are paid for 37 hours – but only work 32.

At a time when many residents are struggling, and council tax keeps rising year after year, I, like many residents, believe this is simply wrong. It’s unfair, and it’s a poor use of taxpayers’ money.

Since the Lib Dem administration introduced this trial, we’ve challenged it at every opportunity. With the numbers stacked against us in the council chamber, that hasn’t been easy – but we’ll keep pushing until this policy ends. Because really, can you imagine this happening in most other industries? Why should council officers be paid for fewer hours when so many taxpayers are working full-time, often under huge pressure, just to make ends meet?

To be clear, this isn’t about blaming council staff. They do work hard. The responsibility lies squarely with the Lib Dem councillors who introduced the policy. They point to lower staff turnover and a reported 123 per cent increase in job applications as proof that it’s working. But let’s be honest – who wouldn’t apply for a job that pays for 37 hours while only requiring 32?

This four-day week has recently attracted national attention again. The Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government recently wrote to council leaders making it clear that councils should not be offering “full-time pay for part-time work”, and warning that such arrangements could be seen as a sign of failure under the Government’s Best Value framework. Last October, the Minister also wrote directly to the Lib Dem leader of South Cambridgeshire District Council, raising concerns about service delivery and value for money

This isn’t new territory. A previous Conservative Government also placed the council on a Best Value notice over the same concerns.

The council leader has since met with government to discuss the issue – but residents and councillors (certainly the opposition councillors) have been told nothing about what was said or agreed. Which brings me to another serious problem at South Cambs: transparency.

Trust in the council is at an all-time low, and frankly, it’s not hard to see why. The four-day week has been pushed through in an undemocratic, closed-door way, with little regard for residents’ concerns. The Lib Dem administration seems convinced it knows better than both Conservative and Labour governments – and better than local people themselves.

Consultation feedback has shown growing dissatisfaction with service levels and how residents’ money is being spent. Yet instead of listening, the Lib Dems have doubled down. That’s why I refused to accept information on the condition that it couldn’t be shared with the public. It’s why we legally forced the council to release information. And it’s why we continue to challenge their spin – even when they seem to believe it themselves.

At a time of rising council tax and stretched services, residents are rightly worried that South Cambridgeshire District Council is pressing ahead with a policy the Government itself has flagged as a red warning sign. Concerns are already being raised about service responsiveness and availability. People quite reasonably expect accessible services, five days a week, and value for the money they pay.

This year’s council elections are the first since the four-day week was introduced. For residents, it’s a real opportunity to have their say. I’m standing for re-election too, and I know it will be a tough year. But this is a chance to vote against a policy that wasn’t even in the Lib Dem manifesto four years ago.

I’m standing because I want to see my local area thrive. I want council tax spent in a way that genuinely puts residents first. For too long now, the council has put itself first and residents second.

As Conservative Group leader in opposition, it’s my job to hold the administration to account – and to offer a clear alternative. By making different choices, the council can protect key priorities, plan for future pressures, and maintain financial stability, all without increasing the burden on local households. That means freezing council tax and scrapping the four-day week.

I stand by the principles of low taxation, fairness, and common sense when it comes to how our money is spent – and I believe many residents do too.

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Sky News has run a frankly deranged — and antisemitic — article that attempts to demonise Brighton’s anti-genocide activists. To the educated eye, it reads like an extract from an Israel lobby playbook. This should perhaps not surprise. Antisemitism is rife in the British media — just not in the way audiences are routinely told to expect.

The article features a seven-minute video that Sky also shared on its social media. The video barely bothers even to ‘both-sides’ the issue. It gives no more than a cursory nod to the idea that activists asking Brighton households to boycott Israeli products might not be antisemitic. Then it goes on to showcase, at length, the ‘fears’ — its interviewees seem anything but afraid, of course — of ‘the Jewish community’ at these supposedly terrifying young people and their clipboards:

Sky’s @LisaAtSky reports from Brighton, where volunteers are going door-to-door asking people to boycott Israeli products.

Brighton’s Jewish community fear the actions of these volunteers could encourage antisemitism.

🔗 Read more: https://t.co/jcyx0X231K pic.twitter.com/p0aDFHZSaY

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— Sky News (@SkyNews) February 11, 2026

Zionism is antisemitism?

And it is absolutely shameless about pushing the claims of a string of Israel advocates that anti-Zionism is antisemitism. This is widely pushed in and by ‘mainstream’ media. It is also a fundamentally antisemitic claim: it posits that being Jewish automatically means supporting the horrific crimes of a racist, apartheid colony. It is also fundamentally dishonest: Jews who oppose Israel’s crimes are front and centre of anti-genocide and anti-Zionist protests. So much so that the ‘mainstream’ media airbrush them out as their presence undermines the proposition that all Jews support Israel and therefore opposing Israel is antisemitic.

Which is exactly the claim that Sky is amplifying, of course. To do so, it showcases a string of some of British Zionism’s most notorious.

Fiona Sharpe, for example. Sharpe is given ample space to claim, without challenge, that many Jews are afraid to wear their ‘star of David’ and that antisemitism is everywhere:

She says: “I think there is an underlying feeling that this country and this city [Brighton] is dealing with an underlying sense of antisemitism and mistrust unlike anything I have ever experienced.

“I think increasingly we see Jewish communities and individual Jews almost forced to take what I call purity pledges – to say ‘yes I’m Jewish, but I don’t support the state of Israel, the situation in Gaza or whatever’.

“I’m a British Jew. I don’t need to justify my existence and my place in my city to anybody.”

‘No part of society not scarred by antisemitism’

Fiona says she feels antisemitism is cutting through “all segments” and “all classes” of British society.

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She says: “There is no part of British society that is not marred and scarred by antisemitism.”

‘Antisemitism’ — but not really

Antisemitism in the UK has been directly equated with opposition to Israel’s genocide in the mainstream media — never called that in the statistics, of course. The latest ‘antisemitism’ statistics page of Israel-funded lobby group ‘Community Security Trust’ (CST) mentions Israel no fewer than 130 times. The page admits that more than half of the incidents it counts as antisemitic are in fact to do with Israel.

It also inadvertently makes clear that many ‘antisemitic’ incidents are directly addressing the political ideology of Zionism — a racist belief that land, that has people of multiple different religions living on, belongs only to Jews. This in turn makes way for apartheid, ethnic cleansing and genocide. For example, an image of an ‘antisemitic’ incident shows graffiti on a toilet door stating that:

Zionists are child killers.

The text does not say “Jews are child killers”. If it did, it would be antisemitic and a lie. So many Jews are horrified by Israel’s crimes and so many oppose them. But Zionists in Israel have slaughtered hundreds of thousands of Palestinian children since October 2023 and are still bombing and starving them. Zionists outside Israel support the slaughter and demand silence on Israel’s crimes.

Let’s get a couple of things straight:

Most Zionists are not Jews. Many Jews are not Zionists. Not just that, many Zionists are antisemitic.

Judaism is around 3500-4000 years old. Zionism is roughly 130 years old. The state of Israel is 78.

These are facts. Facts cannot be antisemitic.

Of course, these factual distinctions don’t fit into the establishment narrative, so the ‘MSM’ ignore them. So does Sky’s article.

Vexatious and failed

Sky also fails to mention that Fiona Sharpe was in the news recently, though nowhere near as widely as she should. Humiliatingly and damningly so — for her and for the Israel lobby. Sharpe was at the centre of a lobby attempt to criminalise Brighton author Greg Hadfield that crashed and burned in January 2026. Hadfield was accused of malicious communications after Sharpe complained that he had posted a screenshot of a tweet that exposed local Zionist and alleged paedophile Ivor Caplin. After his acquittal, Hadfield told Skwawkbox that his acquittal was:

a victory for all journalists and everyone who believes in free speech. It is a defeat for Zionist extremists like Fiona Sharpe, who has embedded herself in the criminal justice system and the local media in Brighton and Hove. It is a defeat for Peter Kyle and the Labour Party who knew for a long time about Ivor Caplin’s ‘likes’ and likes. They said nothing and did nothing. Neither before nor after Caplin was arrested for allegedly sexually communicating with a child.

The Brighton Israel lobby is no stranger to malicious prosecutions. Heidi Bachram, another Brighton Zionist — one of the non-Jewish ones — teamed up with another lobby group, the ‘CAA’, to try to prosecute comedian Reginald D Hunter. Sharpe and CAA accused Hunter of antisemitic abuse — an attempt to ruin him. It didn’t go well for the lobbyists.

The judge in the case threw it out as malicious and vexatious, after CAA deliberately withheld evidence that exonerated Hunter, including lengthy tirades Bachram poured on her victims. So incensed was the judge at the blatantly political lawfare attempt that he didn’t just throw the case out. He ordered that in any future such cases, CAA must attach a copy of his judgment to their submissions to ensure that the court and everyone involved knows how dishonestly it acted.

In his withering remarks, judge Michael Snow said that:

[CAA] did not reveal the extent of her tweets directed against Reginald Hunter in the period immediately preceding the complaints (her tweets were sent between 15 August and 11 September 2024).

The summary misled me into believing that his comments were addressed to her involvement with the Jewish faith as opposed to his response to attempts that were being made to have him ‘cancelled’…

…Ruling

20. I am quite satisfied that the failure to disclose the matters record at paragraphs 19a) to p) above were intentional. If I had been aware of those matters, I would have refused to issue a summons as I would have found the application to be vexatious.
21 . The CAA have demonstrated by the misleading and partial way in which it summarised its’ application and its’ wilful, repealed, failure to meet its’ disclosure obligations, that its’ true and sole motive in seeking to prosecute RH is to have him cancelled. I have no doubt that the prosecution is abusive…
22…However, my view of the conduct of the CAA is consistent with them as an organisation which is not “playing it straight but is seeking to use the criminal justice system, in this case for improper reasons.
23. I direct that a copy of this judgement must be disclosed by the CAA and attached by it, in all future applications.
24. I quash the summons.

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‘I love you IDF guys’

Unsurprisingly, Sky didn’t mention any of this either, despite its relevance and locality to its topic. Nor did it mention that Vicky Bhogal, its first interviewee, has donated to a crowdfunder for the genocidal occupation military because, in her own words:

I love you guys and what you’re doing.

Watermelon smugger

Sky also interviewed Josh Breslaw, drummer with British-Israeli band Oi Va Voi. Breslaw was allowed to drone about the ‘antisemitic’ injustice of having a gig cancelled in 2025, supposedly because the band wouldn’t sign a promise not to be ‘political’.

Breslaw omitted to mention — and Sky didn’t bother to point out — that the Oi Va Voi gig was cancelled because its Israeli lead singer Zohara Niddam had just released a solo album, in the middle of the Gaza genocide, whose cover art showed a naked Niddam taking watermelons away from a watermelon field in a wheelbarrow:

The pearl-clutching, Israel-fanatic and deeply-dishonest Jewish Chronicle demanded to know:

If a non-Israeli artist featured watermelons on an album artwork, would their gig be banned?

Well, that would depend whether the non-Israeli artist’s nation had slaughtered hundreds of thousands of people identified with watermelons as a symbol of their resistance and self-determination, wouldn’t it.

Watermelons have become internationally recognised during the genocide as a national symbol of Palestine and Palestinian identity. During the genocide, Israel has poisoned or destroyed more than 98% of Gaza’s agricultural land. Outraged humanitarians had demanded that the Bristol venue cancel the event. It later caved to the faux outrage of the Israel lobby and apologised.

And of course, it didn’t take long before the wider ethno-supremacist mouthpieces got their own shots in at the Brighton humanitarians. Like the unhinged Murdoch hack Melanie Phillips. Phillips has gone on record to say that anti-Zionist Jews are a threat to the Jewish people. So it’s no surprise she had to stick her oar in, again amplifying the antisemitic proposition that Jewish people are inseparable from her racist political ideology:

Every. Damned. Time.

Sky barely bothered to even gesture at veiling its hit-piece as anything else. The UK ‘mainstream’ media rely on their viewers being too uninformed to spot their lies and misdirections and too busy to investigate.

But scratch the surface and the lies, misdirections and omissions quickly come tumbling out. Especially when the subject is anything to do with the genocidal colony or those who resist it.

Every. Damned. Time.

Featured image via the Canary