Julia Hartley-Brewer providing one of the most entertaining Politics Live appearances in a while today, taking LibDem Layla Moran to town over Covid hypocrisy and Brexit without breaking a sweat. Guido particularly enjoyed Moran claiming schools “never closed” during the lockdowns, and insisting she “is still wearing a mask” as she sat barefaced shoulder to shoulder with her fellow panelists. Julia’s resigned looks to the camera made it even better…
Sunday saw a landslide election victory for Labour in Malta, delivering the party a third term victory against the odds. The win came despite the forced resignation of the disgraced former PM, Joseph Muscat, in January 2020. Muscat’s fall from grace took place during the investigation that followed the murder of journalist Daphne Caruana Galizia. Despite these major scandals, Partit Laburista were victorious; helped on their way to victory by legalising cannabis for personal use last year.
They were advised by a British political consultant who had been playing a key behind-the-scenes role in the campaign advising ministers on how to move on from Muscat and clean up their image at home and abroad. David Taylor, who cut his teeth as a young New Labour staffer and SpAd in the Blair-Brown years, has a reputation for deploying a robust approach to campaigns. It’s a style which clearly found favour in Malta, the small island nation known for its deep-rooted partisan tribalism, where Prime Minister Robert Abela increased both Labour’s share of the vote and its majority over the opposition Nationalist Party.
Ironically, five years ago when David Taylor stood for North Wales Police Commissioner on a “zero tolerance platform” promising to be tough on crime, Taylor said he would “wage war on drugs and trafficking by Manchester and Merseyside gangs”. He even promised a Rudy Giuliani-style war on “anti-social riffraff who threaten to ruin so many lives”. He lost.
Now the government he advises, which legalised cannabis in December, has just won an election on the back of going in the opposite direction and liberalising. Legalising drugs can be electorally popular – who knew?
While Rees-Mogg is just a month into his new job as minister for government efficiency he’s already putting out some good-news press releases. A new data release by the Cabinet Office this morning shows the government saved a whopping £3.4 billion in efficiency savings and fraud crackdowns during 2020/21. Good start, long way to go…
£1.9 billion of this was delivered through reducing losses from fraud or error, with the government counter fraud function’s 16,000 civil servants reaping back £1.388 billion.
On a Covid-front, £138 million of fraudulent PPE contracts were terminated, and £14 million of fraudulent bounceback loans were prevented. The government also managed to find £10 million through the use of forged, stolen or disabled badges of deceased people…
Among other savings were:
There are still unaccounted hundreds of millions of pounds in suspicious transactions related to the pandemic support for business from government, that in all likelihood were made fraudulently. HMRC is now chasing after the money which should have been subject to basic checks before it was dished out. Guido was told that the Treasury was approached by a firm with expertise and AI software widely used by lenders to prevent fraud and they were dismissed as unnecessary. The consequences will be billions wasted…
Rees-Mogg rightly observes “Taxpayers have the right to expect every penny of their money to be justified before it’s spent. These figures show quality need not be sacrificed to achieve better value for money, and I want to accelerate the progress made.” Guido looks forward to seeing how many civil servants he’s managed to cull by this time next year…
After Starmer dropped the ball yesterday, this morning it was Angie’s turn to answer the most pressing question about Labour Party policy: can a woman have a penis? Her response? Such questioning debases the debate, and all that does is “damage people”.
“I think about a young person who’s struggling at the moment, who’s struggling with their identity, and when we’re having a social media or debate around what genitalia someone’s got I think it really debases the serious issues that people face in their lives…
“It shouldn’t be debasted [sic] to a debate that’s being had on the media by people who are not qualified to discuss some of these issues”
That last bit sounds an awful lot like Biden’s Supreme Court nominee, who at her confirmation hearing said she couldn’t define a woman… because she’s not a biologist…
As per news overnight, the Met has just confirmed the investigation into Partygate “has now progressed to the point where the first referrals for fixed penalty notices (FPN) will be made to ACRO Criminal Records Office.”
“We will today initially begin to refer 20 fixed penalty notices to be issued for breaches of Covid-19 regulations. The ACRO Criminal Records Office will then be responsible for issuing the FPNs to the individual following the referrals from the MPS.
We are making every effort to progress this investigation at speed and have completed a number of assessments. However due to the significant amount of investigative material that remains to be assessed, further referrals may be made to ACRO if the evidential threshold is made.”
They reiterate that the total number of referrals from each individual event will not be confirmed so as to not identify individuals…
Another bump in the road for the Chancellor this morning, as the Mirror unravels another string from Rishi’s PR operation. When asked yesterday Siobhan McDonagh whether he owned a Kia Rio – the car he was seen refuelling for the cameras after the Spring Statement – Rishi replied: “we have a Golf”. Less a half-truth, more a quarter-truth at best…
Alongside his family Golf, which he uses to zip around London and is presumably based at his £7 million Kensington Mews house, Rishi also holds the keys to a top-end Range Rover (£94,000) in North Yorkshire, with a BMW and a Lexus also sitting in the garage of his Santa Monica pad, for when he feels the need for speed. A new Lexus can set you back up to £80,000, while top-of-the-range BMWs can fetch over six figures. Is Rishi really all just torque?
