After a trickle of private briefings, Theresa May has finally commented on Partygate in full. In a letter to constituents, obtained by Guido, she says “nobody is above the law” and like so many “I was angry to hear stories of those in Number 10… not properly following the rules”. She sternly concludes “I expect full accountability to follow”. The question is, has she put in a letter in to Graham Brady?
Read the letter in full:
The search for the next Laura Kuenssberg isn’t proving easy for the BBC. With two of the internal front runners – Vicki Young and now Chris Mason – both ruling themselves out of the contest, it looks like bosses are having to cast a wider net than expected: the open application deadline has been pushed all the way to February 10th, after initially being set at 20th January. An extra three weeks for ambitious hacks to polish their CVs…
Guido still has his money on Alex Forsyth, who’s second at the bookies after Jon Sopel. Forsyth’s odds shot up after Young ruled herself out, and is now viewed as the “dark horse” candidate according to BBC insiders speaking to the Times.
Still, a huge deadline extension for a role that usually has an obvious front runner suggests the top execs aren’t so sure this time…
Following his excellent Channel 4 interview quote that the PM hadn’t been celebrating his birthday during the first lockdown, he’d been ambushed by cake, Conor Burns has made cake headlines anew via Chopper’s podcast. The MP and close Boris confidant now claims the PM has personally denied there ever being a cake in the first place.
As ITV’s Paul Brand says, Downing Street never denied when pressed for comment on the original story…
This latest claim, whilst again Thick-Of-It-esque, is a sideshow compared to the real issue – the story wasn’t remotely a new revelation when published by ITV on Monday evening. It’s now been pointed out the story was first reported like-for-like in The Times way back in June 2020. At the actual height of the pandemic…
Bizarrely, after the ITV story emerged on Monday, the Times – with Oliver Wright again as the by-line – re-wrote the story claiming the broadcaster was the one to have revealed it…
At the time no one blinked an eye. The Times didn’t think of it remotely as a scandal, merely throwing it in a long read as some passing colour. Yet this week the Lobby, the opposition and certain agitated government backbenchers have been hyping it up as the final nail in the coffin of the Prime Minister. If Boris survives this circus, Guido’s sure Tory MPs – if not most of Westminster as a whole – will reflect that perhaps things all got rather absurd…
While SW1 waits for the Sue Gray report with bated breath, this morning the Met have put out a statement formally asking the report not to be published in full while they investigate the most egregious events. The statement reads:
“For the events the Met is investigating, we asked for minimal reference to be made in the Cabinet Office report.
The Met did not ask for any limitations on other events in the report, or for the report to be delayed, but we have had ongoing contact with the Cabinet Office, including on the content of the report, to avoid any prejudice to our investigation”
It now looks like whatever’s eventually published, most likely on Monday, will be far less than what the media, and the opposition, were hoping…
Today marks Holocaust Memorial Day, when politicians of all colours come together once again to remember the millions of people murdered under the Nazi regime. That said, not all politicians have come together…
Yesterday Guido reported on Emily Thornberry’s interesting PMQs defence, which involved praising Lenin and Castro as “great people”. According to an outraged Tory MP Marco Longhi, Thornberry was subsequently seen in the queue for the Commons Holocaust Memorial book showing off the social media posts and “laughing about” it with colleagues – something the MP for Dudley MP found “disgusting”. Thornberry is yet to post her subsequent solemn book signing photo…
