Click the video above to watch Labour MP Rosena Allin-Khan squirm through a basic yes-or-no question on Newsnight last night: “Should public spending come down?” It’s a question with such an obvious answer that it should barely be worth asking, but Labour MPs find it impossible. Unless they happen to have just lost a high profile job and don’t care anymore…
The full twelve-minute car crash on Newsnight was classic Polanski. “It was a mistake, I won’t be apologising”…
After Reform demanded a public apology from the BBC for Matt Chorley’s misquoting Farage on Newsnight last night the corporation has acquiesced. Matt Chorley said Farage called for “white cold rage” instead of “pure cold rage.” He was forced to apologise this morning – it wasn’t enough…
The BBC itself has apologised to Farage, removed the Newsnight episode from iPlayer and Sounds for now and will also air an apology tonight. Safe to say the BBC wants Robert Kenyon to appear on the Question Time panel tomorrow night…
Posted on X this morning by Matt Chorley and tellingly retweeted by the BBC Press Office account:
“I owe Nigel Farage an apology.
During last night’s Newsnight we covered the murder of Henry Nowak and the political reaction to the case, including discussing Nigel Farage’s comments about ‘pure, cold rage’.
However I referred to ‘white cold rage’. This was a mistake on my part, a misremembering of the quote. It didn’t change the content of the interview but I should have got the quote right. I apologise to Nigel Farage for this.”
Reform’s shadow home secretary Zia Yusuf last night claimed “the insertion of the word ‘white’ by the BBC is obviously designed to change the meaning completely. It was no slip of the tongue, Chorley said it THREE TIMES.” Now Chorley grovels…
Speaking to BBC Newsnight the Blue Labour group’s primary ringleader Dan Carden suggested that the local elections will be game over for Starmer. Asked if he had confidence in the PM, Carden said:
“He’ll take us into the local elections and I think that will be a moment where the public have been consulted and there’ll be results. All of us as MPs will be looking at what our voters are telling us in those results. But there is definitely a question about the future of the Labour government, the future of the Labour Party and what that vision is that we are setting out for the country.”
He blamed the Labour leadership for the government’s malaise:
“It feels right now like we’re going from crisis to crisis and that happens because there is a lack of ideological vision and strategy at the heart of government… I wish I wasn’t carrying forward this message but I think you know we have to be honest and after the local elections it will be for the PLP and the leadership to look at where next.”
Rise Shabana…
Baroness Margaret Hodge, Labour’s ‘Anti-Corruption Champion,’ told Newsnight last night that No10’s efforts to secure an ambassador job for Matthew Doyle were entirely fair:
“If somebody you’re working with is about to lose your job, there’s nothing wrong I think in saying ‘Are there any other jobs available’ as long as you know that he could apply for going through due process to get those jobs… there’s nothing wrong with friends saying ‘are there any jobs around,’ what I do think was wrong was saying that they shouldn’t have told the Foreign Secretary I think that was wrong.”
Not even Pat McFadden took that line…
Asked by Lobby hacks about his past comments on Trump (“any UK politician who gave Trump the time of day should be ashamed right now”) Burnham was blithe:
“Politicians say things throughout their career, but now the important thing is to focus on the moment you are in.”
Were it so easy…