Former Number 10 Chief of Staff, Nick Timothy, produced scathing criticism of his former boss’s conduct this morning in the Institute for Government podcast. Referencing May’s tirade in Wednesday’s Daily Mail, Timothy said she risks becoming the new Ted Heath…

“I think she needs to be careful [about how she criticises]. She doesn’t want to give the appearance of being a little bit bitter about her experience and Boris’ electoral success and so on in the way that maybe Ted Heath did about Margaret Thatcher.”

Timothy went on to explain the “green credentials” she brandishes now were not particularly apparent in Government, when she was “quite hard on Greg Clarke as the Secretary of State for being a bit too green.” What’s more, Timothy revealed that in Government May contemplated the very same foreign aid cuts she chastised Boris for as a “moral failure”…

“There were certainly conversations when I was in government about whether the 0.7% aid target should be retained in all circumstances and now she criticises them for making the decision she once contemplated.”

If May wants to alienate herself on the back benches she’s going the right way about it…

Despite a report this week claiming Boris has decided the local elections should go ahead as planned in May, the plans aren’t concrete yet. On a Zoom call last night with 300 constituency chairmen, Boris told party organisers that he wants to go ahead with the elections in May “if we possibly can”. Another source said Boris directed his troops to continue working for a May election, though “obviously that’s not definite”, presumably resting on the case rate at the time and the vaccine roll-out. Guido hears one Tory organiser is against the May election date, as the voting venue would require disassembling its current function as a vaccine centre…

Despite endless rumours that Nissan planned to close its Sunderland manufacturing plant, today its chief operating officer Ashwani Gupta instead raved over the opportunities provided by the Brexit trade agreement, celebrating its potential impact on the British car industry. Telling The Telegraph:

“Brexit for Nissan is a positive. We’ll take this opportunity to redefine the auto industry in the UK. In certain conditions, our competitiveness is improved. For some of the cases, it is at par. It depends on which car, but competitiveness is definitely improved in electric vehicles.”

Gupta also claimed the agreement would protect 75,000 jobs across Britain and Europe, and allow Nissan’s Sunderland plant to double its pre-Covid capacity to meet demand. Despite Brexit, Nissan expects UK car sales to outpace Europe’s in future …

London’s Newham council has been plunged into chaos after accusations of an “endemic culture” of anti-Jewish racism in the council’s Labour grouping. Yesterday the group’s chairman, Mushtaq Mughal, was placed under investigation by the Labour Party for a series of social media posts, including sharing a video promoting a group calling for the dismantling of Israel. Despite the investigation, Mughal has not been suspended by Labour, despite calls from Labour Against Antisemitism to do so:

“Councillor Mughal appears to have promoted a series of antisemitic posts via his Facebook account. It is therefore astonishing that presented with this evidence the Labour Party have failed to suspend Cllr Mughal while their investigations take place.”

Newham’s deputy chairman hasn’t seen such lenience from the party, as he was suspended last week for also posting anti-Israel posts on Facebook, including the infamous “Relocate Israel into United States” meme once shared by Naz Shah that saw her quit her post.

The saga doesn’t end there; Newham’s Labour mayor has been slammed by Newham’s only Jewish councillor Joshua Garfield since she came to office in 2018 for her handling of allegations of antisemitism. A report commissioned by the mayor, Rokhsana Fiaz, is said to have “absolutely horrified” those who heard about its contents, as it accused “senior members” of the Labour group of an “attempt to hide the ugly stain of antisemitism”. According to the report, antisemitic material had been published routinely on the Newham Labour Facebook Group page “since at least the beginning of 2018″. The administrator of the group? The mayor’s then-deputy John Gray who stepped down at the end of last year…

After receiving 154,737 responses to his consultation, Oliver Dowden says “the government remains concerned that a criminal sanction for TV licence evasion is increasingly disproportionate and unfair in a modern public service broadcasting system. The consultation responses showed that a significant number of people oppose the criminal sanction with some highlighting the considerable stress and anxiety it can cause for individuals, including for the most vulnerable in society, such as older people.” Sounds encouraging…

Unfortunately the BBC has conned the DCMS into considering “alternative enforcement schemes”, so whilst “the issue of decriminalisation will remain under active consideration” they are going try and figure out a way of coercing money out of people who don’t watch the BBC whilst avoiding the embarrassment of criminalising grannies and hard up single-mums. In other words, keep the twentieth century telly tax…