TalkRADIO’s Ross Kempsell got the interview everyone wanted with Boris today, teasing a number of unexpected answers from the PM hopeful including the revelation that in his spare time he likes to turn wine crates into little model buses, painting people inside. Makes a change from walking in Wales…
Boris also toughened up his stance considerably on Brexit. He now says leaving on October 31st is “do or die”…
N.b. Watch from 6 minutes in to board the Boris bus…
On LBC this morning Boris hit out at a “codswallop” story alleging he is somehow taking advice from Steve Bannon, who he hasn’t met since he met the then Chief of Staff to the President of the USA on an official visit as Foreign Secretary. The much reported ‘texting’ later on was just Bannon trying and failing to secure another meeting…
“This is the biggest load of codswallop I have ever heard.”
Carole is basically the Bannon of the left, churning out whatever she likes without regards for basic facts while her fanatical online following pile in with the retweets…
After weeks of avoiding the airwaves Boris has finally broken cover with a lengthy interview with Laura K last night, ahead of another interview with LBC this morning. Team Boris are gearing up for a ‘media blitzkreig’, will it be enough to turn the negative headlines around?
The main focus of the interview is Brexit, with Boris setting out his big pitch for how to do Brexit differently while committing to an “absolute guarantee” that the UK will come out of the EU on a WTO/No Deal Brexit on October 31st. This will go down well with Brexiteers if he manages to follow through on it, there are going to be a lot of people very unhappy if he doesn’t…
Inevitably Boris’ personal life also comes up – he sticks to his position that he will not discuss his family or loved ones as it “drags them into things in a way that is not fair on them”. Guido somehow suspects that’s not going to satisfy the ravenous media appetite for yet more gossip about the colourful frontrunner…
15 of the Conservatives’ 19 MEPs will be bidding an early farewell to their Brussels expense allowances after the Tory bloodbath in the EU elections last month. The Tories’ leader in the European Parliament Ashley Fox was one of the many who got the chop – he’s produced this endearingly retro farewell video featuring The Communards’ 1988 version of Never Can Say Goodbye. Brexiteers will be hoping that doesn’t become the soundtrack to Brexit…
Despite 60% of Brits knowing what a think tank is, just 3.74% can name one according to new wonk-focused research by ‘We are Flint’. The Adam Smith Institute comes up trumps as the only think tank with to secure more than 1% recognition. Their meme-filled Twitter account must be paying dividends, they’ve already updated their bio to reflect the findings. They tell Guido:
“The Adam Smith Institute has stood consistently and unashamedly by its principles for over four decades—we’re happy to see that means more people know us than any other research outfit.
“It is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer, or the New Economics Foundation (ranking: 19), that we expect our dinner, but from regards to our own crucial work.
“We might all be guided by the invisible hand but we’d be lying if we said we don’t love being a little more visible than everyone else.”
Despite reaching the heady heights of 1.44% recognition, significantly ahead of runners-up the Fabian Society on just 0.85%, the ASI will be less pleased to hear that the margin of error of the 2,000 person poll is +/- 2.2%. Meaning it’s still entirely possible that literally nobody cares outside of SW1…
Ken Clarke told the World At One this afternoon that he would be prepared to back a no confidence vote if the UK was heading for No Deal, even if it was proposed by Labour. The former Chancellor says he could not countenance No Deal because he is pro-business, so has decided he would vote in a way that could usher in Britain’s first Marxist government. Impeccable logic…
“It might trigger an election, it might trigger a change in Government without an election… I am not going to vote in favour of a Government that says it is going to pursue policies that are totally incompatible with everything the Conservative Party has stood for.”
Labour are already pencilling in a possible no confidence vote for Thursday 25th July, one day after the new PM takes office. Now Chris Davies has been recalled by his constituents the Conservatives command a Commons majority of four with DUP help. After the Brecon and Radnoshire by-election this is likely to fall to just three…
This afternoon an innocuous sounding motion to approve a Statutory Instrument relating to the draft Climate Change Act 2008 (2050 Target Amendment) Order 2019 is being slipped through parliament. It is a bit of Theresa May’s legacy. There will be hardly any debate time for the motion. No impact statement. A trillion pounds of taxpayers’ money waved through as a going away present to Theresa May…
Arron Banks has finally had enough of the codswallop. He is suing Carole Cadwalladr for defamation on two grounds; she claimed in a speech (above) to The Convention two weeks ago that “We know the Russian Government offered money to Arron Banks.”
Secondly, in the Ted Talk above she said “And I’m not even going to go into the lies that Arron Banks has told about his covert relationship with the Russian Government.”
Banks says he took no money and he has no covert relationship. Now he is going to sue her to prove it or pay up…
The Sun gets the scoop on the timetable for the new Prime Minister coming in. The winner of the Tory leadership will be declared on Tuesday 23rd July with the new leader taking over on Wednesday 24th after May’s farewell PMQs. One month to go..
Nutty ginger Labour MP Lloyd Russell-Moyle has only been in Parliament two years but he’s got his tribute act to his heroes Jeremy Corbyn and John McDonnell up and running with impressive speed. His latest stunt is inviting the international spokesman for the Iran-backed Houthi rebel group in Yemen, Ahmed Alshami, to Parliament. Their slogan includes “death to the US, death to Israel, curse the Jews”. He’ll fit right in with the Corbynistas…
Russell-Moyle has already called fellow Labour MP Graham Jones a “tit” and “illegal arms sales apologist” for criticising his decision to invite Alshami. Meanwhile there’s not been a peep from the Labour Party or Corbyn himself so far. Best not to upset his old friends at Press TV after all…
UPDATE: Russell-Moyle has finally backed down. Old Comrade Corbyn would never have caved in so easily…
Interesting choice from the Tories over the weekend who re-selected expense-fiddling MP Chris Davies to fight the Brecon and Radnorshire by-election after he was unseated by a recall petition. The numbers look tight for Davies: he had an 8,000 majority in 2017, over 10,000 constituents signed the recall petition, almost double the required threshold. And now the Brexit Party are in the fray too…
The LibDems held the seat from 1997-2015, the bookies reckon they’ve got it in the bag already with very short 1/5 odds, the Tories are way out on 8/1 behind the Brexit Party. To Guido this looks like a damage limitation exercise from CCHQ. They’ve written the seat off already, by putting Davies back in he can own the defeat himself rather than have it tarnish the incoming leader…
Carole Cadwalladr and David Lammy have been spluttering furiously into their cornflakes all morning after Nick Clegg told the Today Programme that there was “absolutely no evidence” that Russia or Cambridge Analytica influenced Brexit. Clegg said “we have a duty to explain fact from some of the allegations that have been made”. Clearly not a duty that Carole has ever felt bound by herself…
“Much though I understand why people want to reduce that eruption in British politics to some kind of plot or conspiracy, some use of new social media through opaque means, I’m afraid the roots to British euroscepticism go very, very deep…”
Never mind the fact that the official report from the Information Commissioner’s Office already crushed all of Carole’s grand conspiracies about Facebook, Cambridge Analytica and Brexit, raising questions about her pet whistleblower Chris Wylie instead. Clegg hasn’t triggered anyone this badly since tuition fees…
If she wants to start addressing disinformation on social media she could start with her own Observer ‘scoop’ over the weekend in which she deliberately mistranscribes a video of Steve Bannon talking about Boris. Bannon says “we went back and forth over text”, instead Carole transcribes this as “back and forth over the text” which then forms the crux of her story. The same people who’d be the first to say Bannon is a pathological liar are now taking an entirely unsubstantiated boast from him as the gospel truth before distorting it even further themselves…
The no comment gambit has not satisfied the headline writers. Boris and Carrie are the political equivalent of Burton and Taylor, the mystique will only drive more speculation. Can’t see this approach lasting a month…
The question is how many of her fellow Labour MPs agree. And how many Tory rebels feel so strongly the other way they’d rather bring down their own government…
The former Foreign Secretary warns that the current Foreign Secretary “cannot afford to be completely absent” from the world stage as the Iran crisis deepens. It’s not just Hunt, the ongoing Brexit/Tory psychodrama has completely distracted the whole UK media/political class from the increasingly serious events unfolding abroad…
Remainer MPs can stamp their feet as much as they like, no deal is still the legal default and there’s nothing they can unilaterally do to prevent it…
The point about Boris’s infamous burka column which is systematically and wilfully overlooked is that Boris was actually defending a woman’s rights to choose whether she wears a burqa or not. Unlike in supposedly ‘liberal’ EU countries like France, Germany, Austria, Belgium, Denmark and the Netherlands where women are legally banned from wearing the burqa in many public places and face fines for doing so. Not to mention Shadow Foreign Secretary Emily Thornberry saying she would actively discriminate against women who wear burqas…
Five years after the last one and she’s still trotting out the same old lines and excuses. The truth is she knows she won’t win…
At the hustings Boris tells Iain Dale, when questioned about last night’s shenanigans “I don’t think they want to hear about that kind of thing”. Which is met with applause from the pro-Boris audience.
Dale presses Boris “So you’re not going to make any comment at all on this issue” to which Boris replies “I think that’s fairly clear.” The audience were not happy with Dale pursuing the point.[…] Read the rest
Nigel Farage…
“I Can Be Boris Johnson’s Best Friend or Worst Enemy… It’s up to Him.”
