Just announced by the government. Ofgem CEO Jonathan Brearley is on excellent terms with Miliband – they are friends from the last Labour government…
The move will embolden Miliband in his clean energy disaster run. It now also ruins the Ofgem review, whose aim is to “revisiting the role of the regulator to ensure that it can support an energy market where innovation and high standards help drive better products and services for consumers, giving them more options to make choices more suitable for their circumstances.“ The review is run by DESNZ, which will now be headed up by the man who ran Ofgem since 2021…
Bearley is not rated by everyone in government, either. A DESNZ source said: “It was his f**k up in not investing in stuff that has made bills go up.” Fail upwards…
Starmer’s latest TikTok somehow attempts to turn his legalistic inaction on Iran into hard military edit. It doesn’t work…
The PM uses the video to claim: “long before the US and Israeli action last weekend, we had already deployed additional military capability to the region.” The inaction is clearly a sore point…
Even more bizarrely the shots of Wildcat helicopters and other armed forces with Starmer’s voice overlaid are accompanied by the intro to Money for Nothing by Dire Straits. At the Lobby briefing of political journalists Starmer’s spokesman was unable to say if the PM approved the choice of track, saying “the PM’s position on defence spending has been set out very clearly” and he wouldn’t “get into internal processes.” That ain’t workin’, that’s the way you do it…
Entries in the comments…
The House of Commons standards committee has recommended redacting the Register of Interests of Members’ Staff, which lists who MPs have on the payroll and to whom they are granting permanent access to the parliamentary estate via a pass.
After staff unions complained about “safety” the committee has recommended “redacting the names of all MPs’ staff and replacing them with their job titles, as well as removing from the register anyone who has no financial interests to declare.” Rendering it useless…
GMB has claimed credit:
Starmer promised a “transparency revolution” when he entered government. Pointless…
It isn’t. In other news Lammy is soon to be part of geopolitics club at his local school for some extra learning…
Kishwer Falkner, chairman of the EHRC from 2020 to 30 November last year, has hit out at Bridget Phillipson over her handling of the single-sex ruling last year. The government delayed new guidance in response to the landmark Supreme Court ruling using a series of excuses…
Replying to a particularly embarrassing puff piece interview in the New Statesman, Falkner – now free to say what was really going on – criticised the Education Secretary:
“My experience of the Minister for Women and Equalities, when chair of the EHRC, was, at best, disinterest and disengagement…
To now read that women “deserve” single sex spaces or that Phillipson needs to go through the EHRC code “thoroughly and properly” is both patronising and disingenuous. She received the code in April 2025, and was fully aware that changes would be made to 3/13 sections impacted by the Supreme Court ruling.
Those changes were submitted on 4 September. To have taken six months on circa 11 pages of text drafted by leading lawyers, implies a level of meticulousness not normally afforded to senior ministers, where decision-making is a prerequisite.
The real reason for the delay is that Phillipson does not like this law as clarified by the Supreme Court. It is possible that she was awaiting the outcome of a Judicial Review in which she argued that female-only lavatories could continue to be seen as single-sex even if they permitted trans women to access them, contrary to the EHRC and Supreme Court position. That ruling is in, and EHRC won on all counts.
This isn’t about “an approach” taken by myself or my board, as that has now been tested in in court. Phillipson has erected a hurdle to application of the law, thus denying women validation of their rights. That is there for all to see.”
Should clarify things…
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.”
