Two months ago Simon Enright, one-time press adviser to the King and Queen, was being tipped to become “Sir Keir Starmer’s king of spin in 10 Downing Street“. According to The Sun’s Harry Cole, Sue Gray was “keen to bring in Simon Enright”, which seemed plausible given he had been providing training and advice to the shadow cabinet.
That didn’t play out, Simon Enright last week left spin-shop Freuds to become the new director of communications for Grant Shapps at the Ministry of Defence. Which means Sue Gray is still looking for a new “king of spin” for Number 10…
She could of course choose a queen, Beth Rigby’s online analysis in what is the unregulated-by-Ofcom “Sky Analysis” (formerly “Sky Views”) section of the channel’s website already reads like she is writing press releases for the Labour Party:
Perhaps the Parliamentary Lobby’s only openly known Labour Party member, Paul Waugh, might get the job assuming he doesn’t want instead to have a second go at becoming the MP for Rochdale.
Could Tom Baldwin reprise the role he did for Miliband? His hagiography of Keir shows his closeness to the principal. They say everyone has a third act in them…
Speaking at an IPPR think tank event in London, the Health Secretary compared striking junior doctors to mutinous sailors.
“I feel like we’ve turned the ship, the boat’s going in the right direction, except some of the crew are trying to row in one direction while the rest of us are going in the other. You can’t make progress that way. We are seeing an improving NHS, and we’ve seen improvement despite resident doctors’ strikes, but the fact is, performance would have been better and there would have been more money to invest in staff and services if the BMA hadn’t been undertaking the strike action.”
