By May, the Beergate saga was threatening to unravel into full-on kormageddon. Having banked on seeing off Boris with relentless moralising over the infamous cake ambush, Sir Keir was now facing it on all fronts for his beer-swigging hypocrisy. In the first week of the month, Durham Constabulary confirmed they were conducting a formal investigation into Beergate, with both Starmer and Rayner – who Labour had previously claimed wasn’t even present at the feast – vowing to resign if fined. The story seemed to evolve every five minutes, with Guido revealing Labour had even sent “photo evidence” to the police to prove Starmer’s innocence. He who lives by the cake, dies by the curry…
It wasn’t sunshine and daisies for the government, either. Ministers who spent weeks repeating the “wait for Sue Gray” line could tell us to wait no longer, as Gray’s report finally arrived in the third week of May. Even before it dropped, images from within the report leaked to the media, with snaps showing Boris appearing to toast Lee Cain at his leaving do in November 2020… behind a table-full of wine, gin and fizz. Hardly the Wolf of Whitehall stuff – and details of the event had already appeared to a muted response months earlier – although the gathering nonetheless ran contrary to Boris’s denial in the Commons. When the report itself arrived in all its glory, Boris said he was “humbled” and had “learned a lesson”. By then he’d already been cleared by the Met, with Guido revealing the exclusive scenes from inside No.10 after the announcement…
Away from the Beergate-Partygate psychodrama, the local elections saw the Tories suffer a net loss of 485 seats, with Labour picking up 108 – mostly in London – and the LibDems winning 240. A by-election battle also kicked off in Wakefield, after disgraced ex-Tory MP Imran Ahmed Khan formally resigned following his sexual assault conviction. Labour selected Starmer ally Simon Lightwood (his fifth attempt at gaining a seat), though not without sparking a meltdown in the local association by vetoing their preferred Corbynite candidate. So it goes…
One of Guido’s most popular stories of May came on its final day, when we revealed Ed Balls and Yvette Cooper’s son, Joel Cooper, had led protests against Nadhim Zahawi at Warwick University. Zahawi had been hounded off campus by a group of students accusing him of “inciting hatred” by defining “adult human females”, with Cooper leading the charge to the applause of his fellow activists. All very brave. At the time, Labour were still scratching their heads over the question of whether women can have penises, with Cooper’s mother, the Shadow Home Secretary, insisting she wouldn’t be “drawn down a rabbit hole” on the topic…
Honourable Mentions:
Headline of the month: LibDem Candidate’s Pornstar Sideline Revealed
