Guido can confirm that highly respected No 10 foreign policy adviser John Bew has told colleagues he will shortly be departing Downing Street. Labour briefed back in July that Bew wouldn’t be allowed to continue advising as a SpAd, and a month later he was said to be still at work in government on “a series of defence-related issues.” Now he jokes that as “an excellent new foreign affairs team beds in, it is a good time to sub myself off before I begin to resemble dear old Casemiro”…
Bew, who has survived four PMs, tells colleagues will now take up long-held plans to start as Professor of History and Foreign Policy at KCL – where he’ll be heading up a new Centre for Statecraft and National Security. He’s also taking up a position as Distinguished Visiting Fellow at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University to work on an Urgent Security project as well as becoming Distinguished Advisor to the Australian National Security College. Bew’s keeping busy…
Government insiders speak highly of Bew and there were some rumours he would stay on in a Starmer administration. It’s Downing Street’s loss…
Labour spent their time in opposition on a moral crusade, wagging their fingers at Tory “cronyism” and promising they’d be the ones to “clean up politics.” Though Starmer’s lofty pledges to govern “with openness and transparency in everything we do” are not ageing well…
After 76 days in power, the Cabinet Office’s list of SpAd interests still hasn’t been published. Maybe Sue Gray (on £170,000-a-year salary) and her slow appointments of SpAds — is to blame for the delay…
In the past, these lists have revealed commercial ties and side gigs of SpAds. So, it’ll be interesting to see given current events – if and when Labour finally releases it – especially with some whispers suggesting advisers are being part funded by Labour-linked advisory firms. One for the transparency Starmer preaches, surely…
In the latest chapter of Labour’s cronyism saga, Starmer’s chief of staff Sue Gray is now pocketing a staggering £170,000 – £3,000 more than the Prime Minister himself. According to the BBC, Gray demanded the princely sum and ignored advice to take a few thousand less to ‘dodge this very story’…
Not only does Gray’s salary dwarf that of her Tory predecessor Liam Booth-Smith, she previously led the crusade for austerity in adviser pay. Back in 2016, while she was at the Cabinet Office, she spearheaded the policy to cap SpAd salaries at £72,000—though she pushed for them to be even lower. Now she’s raking in 236% of the salary cap she enforced…
A Tory source tells Guido:
“The hypocrisy of Sue Gray taking the highest ever SpAd salary – after years of cutting Tory spad pay at every opportunity and persecuting generations of Tory advisers – is a new level of reality.”
Hypocrisy from Labour comrades is a theme that seems never ending…
The Tories are asking questions about Sue’s salary:
The McSweeneyites are seething…
Lucy Powell on LBC, asked by Tom Swarbrick for her reaction to Labour MP Samantha Niblett’s call for a ‘summer of sex’ debate in Parliament: “I personally don’t own any sex toys, but each to their own… I’m not really sure that’s the right place for it, no.”