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Hi Crosbie,

24a - 5 letter "mates" minus last letter ("a lot of" (but not all)) around/'outside' "America" - definition is "abandon"

I really like this clue:-)

Usually find Vlad tricky and today no exception - off to a slow start with 18 and then steady progress noting the political references which to my mind all pointed at a certain individual which helped with 7 and 25.
Got stuck in SE corner for exactly same reason as Brendan and Jono but the parsing of 25 was clear enough to finally sort that out.
Lots of excellent clues today but my personal favourite was 2 which took me back to my schooldays in late 70's and a teacher who drilled '2s number' into us - I can still recall it even now.
Thanks Vlad

Thanks Brendan!

Silly not to see how ‘a lot of’ worked. I had it right indeed, but was trying to work out some way to interpret it as a verb or collective noun or something…

I too had the wrong ending for 15d for a while (unparsed LION second word for 25a?)
Which politician does 25 refer to? Is it a specific one? I don't think it's BoJo - he features elsewhere.

Chris, yes it is Bj, he is quoted as saying he wanted to be this as a child

thanks jono - heaven forfend!

😂

Could someone explain 13a for me?
The solution is obvious "to confuse", but I can't follow the definition.

Well that was a struggle - but I knew it was going to be as soon as I saw Vlad’s name. Can’t believe he’s made me think about that man and his lot on a weekend!! Struggled to start but FOI was 14a, LOI 2 due to an annoying typo on my part. CODs 7 and 4 - the latter for at least putting it in the same theme (oops showing my politics now).

My initial thought was that the solution referred to Idi Amin, the infamous African dictator.
But maybe he just wanted to be King of Scotland.