It’s the month from hell for Josh Simons – former head of Starmerite operation Labour Together and now a minister – who has texted crucial details of the government’s investigation into him to every Labour MP elected in 2024. He wrote in a deleted mass text reported by Politico:
“Jonny rang, PM will ask Laurie to look in to it. Aim is to move fast. But PET did find I had not broken the code.”
That’s chief whip Jonathan Reynolds, the PM’s Independent Adviser on Ministers’ Interests Laurie Magnus, and the Cabinet Office Propriety and Ethics Team. Simons is a Cabinet Office minister…
Downing Street and the Cabinet Office have so far kept shtum when it comes to details of any investigation. Take it from the horse’s mouth…
UPDATE: Chief Secretary to the PM Darren Jones tells the Commons: “The Prime Minister has been advised that the matter should be referred now to the independent adviser on ministerial standards, which the Prime Minister has done today.”
Statement by Paul Dacre, Editor-in-Chief of Associated Newspapers Limited, following Harry’s loss in court today:
“Prince Harry wrote a sad book which boasted about his killing of 25 Taliban, his drug-taking and, in cringe-making detail, how he lost his virginity. There isn’t a laundry in the cosmos big enough to wash all the dirty linen he has aired about his own family. For him, to complain about HIS privacy being invaded takes, not just the biscuit, but the whole tin. Poor Harry. I feel sorry for the way a confused and angry young man has been drawn into this case. The bitter irony is that his mother, Diana, liked the Mail. We were her paper. We took her side in her acrimonious break up with Charles. She and I would speak and meet. The Mail’s superb royal reporter was her friend and confidante. The truth is that this trumped-up action – which has cost well over £50 million and wasted a huge amount of valuable court time – should never have been brought to trial. That it did, raises profoundly disturbing questions about the conduct of elements of the legal profession. Today’s verdict is not just a victory for Associated’s magnificent journalists – several of whom have had a terrible toll imposed on their health and lives – but a free press generally. Make no mistake. This was a conspiracy, supported by Hacked Off, to destroy a paper. Financed by the orgy-loving, racist Max Mosley and involving the actor Hugh Grant, it was also a sinister bid to resuscitate Leveson Two and impose statutory regulation on the press which, even now, is rearing its ugly head in Labour’s Media Green Paper.”