Crisis meetings are going on in Downing Street at the highest level. Senior No10 staff are working overtime on damage control…
It has been noted by observers inside No10 that some high-level meetings are taking place without the Chief of Staff, Morgan McSweeney. The PLP’s demands for McSweeney’s head have this week reached fever pitch over his role in appointing Peter Mandelson…
Insiders tell Guido that some top-level staff inside Starmer’s operation have privately discussed a removal of McSweeney and are advising the PM on that basis. A Downing Street source said: “It’s unclear how Morgan will react and still unclear if the PM will do all of this.” Starmer has resisted pressure from top Blairite aides to sack the McIavelli before…
Starmer watchers have long tried to game how long the PM would survive without the man who delivered him to Downing Street. Tom Baldwin is licking his lips…
Guido hears Downing Street staff are looking wearily at proposals produced by activist ex-PM Gordon Brown for vetting reform. The ex-PM is this weekend running an intensive political cover operation for Starmer, insisting both he and the PM were both “betrayed” and “misled” by Mandelson…
Brown proposes, among other things in his personal wish list, implementing an independent anti-corruption commission appointed by parliament, US Senate-style parliamentary grillings of appointees to major posts, and statutory powers for the new ethics and integrity commission. Guido hears discussions are also taking place with regard to changes to the No10 political operation that would bolster the influence of the Parliamentary Labour Party in Downing Street…
This week 798,535 visitors visited 867,433 times viewing 890,425 pages. The most read and shared stories in order of popularity were:
You’re either in front of Guido, or you are behind…
The House of Commons is paying over a grand a year for Sky Sports to play on its annunciator screens. And still Starmer takes the free box Arsenal tickets…
The taxpayer bill over the last three years has ticked up:
Guido is told “the House does not have any other TV subscriptions for annunciators on the estate, barring the Sky Sports subscription.” Give MPs their EastEnders…
The Mail ran a story today claiming entrepreneur Matthew Freud entertained Angela Rayner at his Notting Hill house recently. An unlikely partnership…
Fleet Street observers speculate it has something to do with Freud’s fractured link to Rupert Murdoch. He was married to Rupert’s daughter Elisabeth until 2014 – they’re now divorced….
Labour figures on the left have long campaigned/threatened to launch Leveson 2 – regulations aimed at severely restricting press freedom. Freud knows the consequences for Fleet Street – has the Mail been duped into running a story that is more about the Press being imperilled than it seems to realise…
Rayner is gearing up for her run at No10. Only the taxman stands in her way…
Met Police Deputy Assistant Commissioner Hayley Sewart:
“I can confirm that officers from the Met’s Central Specialist Crime team are in the process of carrying out search warrants at two addresses, one in the Wiltshire area, and another in the Camden area.
The searches are related to an ongoing investigation into misconduct in public office offences, involving a 72-year-old man.
He has not been arrested and enquiries are ongoing.”
Speaking at his press conference on the Pride in Place programme which was obviously all about Mandelson, Starmer said:
“Tomorrow’s front pages are unlikely to be about the Pride in Place programme.”