Mark Selby genuinely felt his career could be at an end just months ago, but after landing his third title of the season things are looking very rosy again for the Jester from Leicester.

The 41-year-old beat Stephen Maguire to win the Welsh Open on Sunday night, taking his career tally to a monumental 24 rankings titles – just six players in the history of snooker have more.

Selby’s triumph in Llandudno comes after a brilliant win at the British Open in September and a defence of his Championship League Invitational title just earlier this month.

It is quite the turnaround from April last year when Selby was beaten in the first round of the World Championship by debutant Joe O’Connor and said retirement was a possibility.

The four-time world champion has spoken about his struggles with mental health in the past and ahead of the Crucible last year his snooker was making it worse, so much so that quitting the game was a genuine consideration.

Speaking after his Welsh Open glory on Sunday, Selby said: ‘If you had asked me then, after that game, would I be carry on playing? I would have probably said no.

‘If you had put me on the spot, to let me make a decision there and then, I would have probably never played again.

‘But you know, I had a bit of summer away, I spoke to friends and family. I said, I am not really enjoying it, I cannot keep putting myself through it if I am going to be feeling like that. Because it’s just making me even more ill.

‘They were saying, why don’t you have a bit of time out. You have the summer anyway. Don’t even go anywhere near the table. I spoke to the doctor a couple of times and he said to me, look, whenever you feel like that, just pick and choose. I know you want to play in everything but you need to start putting yourself first.

‘That is what I thought I would do. After the summer, I felt a little bit better, I was practising a little bit, speaking with the doctor, changed a few things, and seemed to be in a better place.

‘That is not to say that from now until the end of the season, I might play in everything. That could easily turn. If I am in that position again like I was a couple of weeks before the Worlds, whether it’s the World Championship or Players Championships, Hong Kong, I definitely won’t compete. It’s not healthy.’

The world number three may be ready to sit out any event if he feels he has to, he is also feeling very good about his game after two titles this month.

Attention is going to swiftly turn to the World Championship again, with the highlight of every season now just a couple of months away and the four-time champ set to head to Sheffield as one of the favourites.

‘I’ll go there confident, I can’t not,’ Selby said of his upcoming trip to the iconic South Yorkshire theatre.

‘This season so far, even when I’ve not done well in some of the tournaments and I’ve gone out early doors in the last 32 or last 16, I still feel like I’ve played okay.

‘There haven’t been many matches where I can single out a really poor performance. Against [Jack] Lisowski in the UK I felt like I played good and he played great. Xiao Guodong in the Champions of Champions in the semis, I felt like I played good and he played great.

‘I knew it was there. It was just about getting that momentum and stringing some wins together. I hadn’t been doing that since September in the British Open. This week it all sort of came together.

‘I feel like my back up game is sort of somewhere near where I want it to be. I feel like in the last couple of seasons it’s not been as good as it was in past years.

‘That might have been because of how I was mentally and I possibly wasn’t up for the fight because of how I was feeling.

‘At the moment I feel in a bit of a better place and I’m enjoying the challenge out there hence why I’m probably playing a bit better.’

Selby is still a fierce competitor and undoubtedly one of the greatest players ever to pick up a snooker cue, but his priorities have changed since facing down his mental health struggles and trophies have slipped down the pecking order.

‘From where I was, I’m just happy to be in a half decent place mentally,’ he said. ‘Health is wealth. It doesn’t matter how much money you’ve got in the bank, you could have all the money in the world, but if you’re not enjoying life and not in a good place it means nothing.

‘I feel like I’m in a bit better place and that’s all that matters to me. I’m happy with that. If I win tournaments along the way then great, if I don’t as long as I can stay how I am at the moment and slowly improve I’ll always be happy with that.’

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FOR all the attention paid to them, political speeches rarely leave any lasting impact.

Most are just bundles of platitudes which have been forgotten even before the applause has died down.

AFP

JD Vance’s ‘stunning’ Munich address will be remembered in years to come as a pivotal moment in US-European relations[/caption]

AFP

The US Vice President’s painful home truths were no off-the-cuff comments in the style of boss Donald Trump[/caption]

But in Germany last Friday we heard a stunning exception — and from a relative newcomer to politics.

The address to the Munich Security Conference by US vice president JD Vance will be remembered in years to come as a pivotal moment in US- European relations.

The fact that it has caused so much upset to so many European bigwigs is testament to what it set out to achieve — to tell painful home truths to cherished allies.

These were no off-the-cuff comments in the style of Donald Trump, a man who often likes to say outrageous things as an opening gambit in negotiations.

This was a carefully-crafted speech with a devastatingly simple point at its heart — that if you are going to defend a country or a continent you first have to be sure about what you are defending.

Europe’s problem, as Vance made clear, is that it has itself been lax in defending the ­values that it professes to uphold.

It is no use calling on your citizens to defend freedom and democracy from external threats if you are not yourself standing up for those things.

Vance cited several instances in which Europe is failing in this regard.

First and foremost was last year’s Romanian presidential elections, which were cancelled at the last moment by the country’s constitutional court on the grounds that a number of TikTok accounts used in the campaign appeared to have emanated from Russia.

Neutered forever

This has become standard practice for Putin’s regime. Russian bots have been implicated in US and UK elections.

But for a court to use that as an excuse to annul an election is chilling — as well as being an insult to the intelligence of the people.

Yet it is all too symptomatic of what is wrong with European democracy. The EU, as well as many individual member states, have constitutions which are based on a fundamental distrust of the people.

They have powerful legal institutions which see their role as defending the people from themselves.

Take Germany, where the right-wing party AfD looks likely to make striking gains in the upcoming elections.

Europe’s problem, as Vance made clear, is that it has itself been lax in defending the values which it professes to uphold

Ross Clark

Already, the political establishment is gearing up to refuse to accept the possibility of the party leading or even forming part of the next government.

Ever since World War Two, the prevailing attitude among Europe’s elite has been that democracy gave Germany Hitler and therefore it must be neutered forever after.

Europe’s elite outraged

The people should be given a choice, but only within narrowly defined parameters which ensure the perpetual survival of social democracy.

It has led in some cases to the same parties pursuing the same economic policies being in power for the past eight decades.

Now that those policies are failing to deliver the bacon, it is hardly any wonder voters are rebelling by backing “populist” parties.

AP

On some issues, Europe’s elite are positively Putinesque in their desperation to silence dissent[/caption]

Getty

Supporters of Germany’s right-wing AfD wave flags during a campaign rally and the party looks likely to make striking gains in the upcoming elections[/caption]

Alamy

Since WW2, the prevailing attitude among Europe’s elite has been that democracy gave Germany Hitler, and therefore it must be neutered forever after[/caption]

What does “populist” mean other than policies that are popular but which those currently in power wish were not?

The difference between the US European attitudes to democracy can be summed up in the wording of the European Convention on Human Rights, which was written by European lawyers and the UN Universal Declaration on Human Rights, which was influenced more by American lawyers.

While the latter states that the basis of government “shall be the will of the people”, the former contains no such phrase.

Vance also drew attention to the numerous ways in which European courts are suppressing free speech, such as in the case of Adam Smith-Connor, who was prosecuted for silently praying outside an abortion clinic in Bournemouth, thus infringing a public spaces protection order.

Some people might reasonably ask what that case has to do with an international security conference but Vance is quite right to be shocked by the case.

It is alien to Americans because free speech is written into the US constitution.

In Britain and in other European countries, on the other hand, the freedom to express your views seems increasingly to be treated as a privilege rather than a right, and one that can be withdrawn at whim if some special interest group is offended by what you say.

Where, by the way, are Britain’s left when it comes to defending the right of anti- abortion activists to protest?

Europe is drifting towards becoming a dictatorship of ‘liberals’ who are not really liberal at all

Ross Clark

They wail to high heaven when climate activists are prosecuted for criminal damage or obstructing roads (never for protesting in itself), yet when it came to criminalising silent prayer outside abortion clinics almost every Labour MP, as well as many from other parties, happily voted in favour.

Vance is right. Europe is drifting towards becoming a dictatorship of “liberals” who are not really liberal at all.

On the contrary, on some issues they are positively Putinesque in their desperation to silence dissent. They treat dogma on trans rights, diversity, Net Zero and so on as unchallengeable.

Europe’s elite is so outraged because the US vice president has done just that — and challenged them.

Sorry to disabuse them, but to many of us there was not the remotest thing objectionable or “unacceptable” about Vance’s speech.

On the contrary, I wish we had more politicians of our own who were so frank.

BNPS

Adam Smith-Conner was prosecuted for silently praying outside an abortion clinic in Bournemouth[/caption]

AFP

There was not the remotest thing objectionable or ‘unacceptable’ about Vance’s speech[/caption]