Vehement left wing activist Carol Vorderman has been seeking comfort with lefty allies following her ousting from the BBC, looking for new ways to voice her hate of the government. Last month she was spotted having drinks with Shadow Education Secretary Bridget Phillipson after her Twitter Bitch Fight with CCHQ. Failing a potential Labour candidacy bid, she’s now found a new role at the Good Law Project, teaming up with consistent court loser Joylon Maugham to bring new “VIP files“, which apparently contain material relating to crony covid contracts during the pandemic. Praising the “crowd funded” organisation, she announced the formation of the new dream team this morning on X. She didn’t mention the fact that a big chunk of the cash goes straight to the Treasury…
I’ve teamed with @GoodLawProject – the crowdfunded legal organisation which first discovered the VIP PPE Lane
Thanks to YOUR help we are now bringing you #TheVIPFiles
Tories think it will go away thanks to their friendly media organisations.
It won’t
NEW FILE OUT ON MONDAY💪🏼 pic.twitter.com/xT8YsF43Zf
— Carol Vorderman (@carolvorders) December 8, 2023
Jolyon, the restless fox-beater – who finds it “really hard losing cases” – is hoping the new addition will help him in his quest to bash the government, though if the Joylon’s track record is anything to go by, Guido doubts it will be a successful project, even with the help of Vorderman’s new found “voice“. If Jolyon and Vorderman are so intent on their political campaigns, they should stop wasting time in the courts and stand for election…
Prince Harry has just failed in his attempt to get part of the Mail on Sunday publisher’s defence thrown out in his High Court libel case against them. Associated Newspapers Limited (ANL) is putting forward what’s called an “honest opinion” defence which argues that a public statement was presented as opinion, not fact. Justice Nicklin today refused a request from Harry’s lawyers to strike out the defence because it has “a real prospect of success”.
“The Defendant has a real prospect, at trial, of demonstrating that the Duke of Sussex had not made an offer to the Government to pay for his security before he began his proceedings for judicial review“.
Harry’s arguing against the claim that he only offered to pay for his own security after he got into a legal battle with the government over who would fund his bodyguards. Taxpayers are looking forward to the trial…
UPDATE: Now Harry has been ordered to pay at least £48,447 to the Mail on Sunday for his efforts.
Chairman of the Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR), Richard Hughes, pointed fingers at Rishi Sunak and Jeremy Hunt, blaming them for the watchdog’s inaccurate predictions. The OBR managed to get its deficit forecast wrong by £30 billion last November, apparently the fault of the government. If you are making forecast errors of that magnitude on a three-month time horizon you are simply not responsible.
Now Hughes is preparing for his forecasts to be wrong again. He claimed forecasts might swing by as much as £30 billion again this time round, claiming this is courtesy of ministers’ knack for deviating from their own plans. Speaking to MPs on the Public Accounts Committee, he said:
“As we all know, there are patterns of behaviour in Government where they say they are going to do things and then everybody knows they are not going to do them. But we have to believe them when they say it…So that could drive up to £20-£30 billion error in our medium-term forecasts of public spending.”
He agreed with some economists that Hunt’s Autumn Statement which announced £20 billion of tax cuts while pencilling in equally large spending reductions was “implausible“. And Labour thinks the OBR should run the economy…
The Tories have caused quite a stir with their reinvigorated social media output – Guido hears CCHQ’s new head of digital Dan O’Neil is charging into the role with good results. A meme attacking Labour about illegal migration has now racked up 12 million views on Twitter. Some MPs aren’t too happy about it though, with Tobias Ellwood and Alicia Kearns calling for it to be deleted. Guido seems to remember a different initial reaction from Ellwood’s account…
Party Chairman Richard Holden told Guido last night that MPs were coming round to the meme after a frosty initial reaction. Meanwhile the new (legal) migration minister Tom Pursglove was asked about the meme this morning on both the Today programme and Sky News – to which he could dish out Tory attack lines against Labour. A clear win.
UPDATE: The tweet now has 16 million views.
The SNP are scrambling to maintain a connection with their dwindling supporters thanks to copious amounts of Scottish scandals, resorting to the creation of a WhatsApp channel for “up-to-date news.” A far cry from their unfulfilled promise of a “rebuttal unit” to respond to misleading claims about the independence campaign. Desperate times…
The party sent a round robin email beckoning supporters to join the new group, saying:
“As we move forward quickly towards the next Westminster election in 2024, we’re going to be providing you with new campaign tools to support your efforts as you engage with voters in communities across Scotland.”
To be fair, they only received less than half a million pounds in donations this quarter, looks like they’re spreading thin the budget…
That’s one way to avoid the headache that comes with deleting WhatsApp messages – have them readily available to the public. Though unless they’re planning on revealing the names of the two politicians in the lockdown love affair scandal, Guido doubts many will be jumping at the chance to join the chat…
