At Sunak’s joint conference with Jens Stoltenberg The Guardian’s Pippa Crerar asked the NATO chief whether he’d seen the polls over in the UK and, with them in mind, had he had any talks with Labour? Just in line with the “precautionary principle”, promise…

Sunak delivered a long-winded answer for her previous question and prevented any talk of Labour coming into power: “Not right to draw Jens into domestic politics, that wouldn’t be appropriate for him.” Not the smoothest blockade…

Last Friday long-serving Penny Mordaunt SpAd Ed Jankowski left her office. Prompting a flurry of questions in SW1 and more than one raised eyebrow in Downing Street over her high staff turnover…

Jankowski worked alone prior to Hannah Galley joining the team in summer 2023 and leaving a few months later. In late February this year old Penny leadership campaigner Alex Read transferred from communications agency inHouse to Penny’s team – he’s now “spinning all the plates” in an office known to be “difficult” and “very solitary“. Government sources are noting “the gang” is getting back together – though only a gang of two…

Guido hears from sources sympathetic to Mordaunt that a slimmed-down team is fine because she is a “work horse” and that SpAds at her office can “lean on the civil service” if they want to do more politicking. Former Penny SpAd Laura Round is still thought to be busy organising from outside Parliament. Mordaunt, after all, did turn down the “invited to leave” Richard Holden SpAd Robbie Lammas when he came knocking. No room at the inn…

With Mordaunt’s seat at risk a pre-election ascendency would do her well. MPs on Team Penny are highly active in comparison with other leadership hopefuls. It’s the voters that count…

LOTO have clearly taken yesterday’s poll that 1 in 8 Labour voters deem the English flag “racist” to heart, making a salient effort to show their celebration of St George’s Day. Starmer released a touching video on X of his own “personal moments” that he was “proud to be English”– his family holiday to the Lake District, his love of football and of course the Law. Quintessential…

Meanwhile, Rishi Sunak shared a modest photo of himself with a St George’s flag mug, and Emily Thornberry has remained noticeably quiet about the Patron Saint Day. Real proof of patriotism would be to make this a national holiday…
UPDATE: Meanwhile on Whitehall…

Maybe that’s Rishi under there…

Sunak is going to announce that defence spending will rise to 2.5% of GDP by 2030. Current spending is a little over 2%. That’s on top of the £500 million announced for Ukraine. Defence-minded ministers Schapps, Tugendhat, Mordaunt and others have called for the move variously in op-eds over the last few weeks. Heading up to 2.5% will mean a total of £75 billion over the next six years…

UPDATE: Sunak has made the announcement. Two years after Boris…

Guido reported yesterday that Labour’s candidate for East Midlands Mayor, Claire Ward, invited Starmer and Wes Streeting earlier this month to King’s Mill Hospital in Ashfield, for which she is Chairman of the Board of Directors – involving the hospital in political activity while also failing to invite Tory candidate Ben Bradley. It looks like the Tories’ ‘patients’ with the shenanigans is running thin…

Local MP Lee Anderson accused “same old Labour” of “gutter politics” for the move. In the Commons today Health Secretary Victoria Atkins told Anderson that the government has raised the matter with the Chief Executive of NHS England and the regional NHS director as a potential breach of the widely-accepted Nolan Principles of public standards. Not quite what the doctor ordered…

Just last week Ward was banging on about how “important” the Nolan Principles are to her. What happened?

The weekly tradition of the cross government meeting of Special Advisers (lamely known in the village as ‘SpAd school’) has somehow survived through multiple Tory administrations. The meeting tends to leak when things are going badly. As the Sunak regime winds up, it’s fair to say it’s leaking like a sieve…

Guido is told by several SpAds present at the meetings that Downing Street Chief of Staff Liam Booth-Smith has finally resurfaced to head up the increasingly thinly attended gathering. The chatter is that he had avoided them for six weeks, leaving it up to Deputy Chief of Staff Will Tanner to try and rally the despondent troops…

Guido’s moles complained that both Booth-Smith and Tanner would arrive, list trivial successes of the week like “women in sports announcement from DCMS,” meanwhile ignoring news leading stories such as Lee Anderson defecting to Reform, and thereby “ignore the elephant in the room“. Many in Downing Street and Whitehall are simply going through the motions, having missed the boat on the private sector milk round. Meanwhile, insiders say open tensions between key personalities at the top of the building continue. The shine has come off spadding…