Starmer tried to kick away Badenoch’s attack on Haigh by saying: “I gently remind her that two of her predecessors had convictions for breaking the Covid rules.” Wrong…
The PM may need to find himself correcting the record. Boris and Sunak only got Fixed Penalty Notices. As anyone with experience of them would know, they are not convictions. RAC helpfully explains:
“A fixed penalty is issued by the police for minor offences and isn’t classed as a criminal conviction. If you pay the fine on time, that’s the end of the matter and all liability for the offence is discharged. It will not form part of a criminal record.”
As a former DPP Starmer might be expected to know the difference. Will he correct himself?
Dear Co-conspirators,
On Wednesday night co-conspirators, friends, politicians and the best of the Westminster media pack gathered in Pall Mall for Guido’s twentieth anniversary dinner celebration.
As you would expect from a Guido party the booze flowed freely – for once however I was stone cold sober because I was going to deliver a speech (see below) which I did not want to stumble over. After six general elections, three referendums, eight Prime Ministers and having now even seen off my fourth Spectator editor, I am finally logging off the blog. If a week is a long time in politics, 20 years is an eternity.
Counting my mis-spent youth in student politics, apart from a foray in the City, politics has been my life for four decades. It remains to be seen how easy it will be to detox after being at the centre of things in SW1 for so long. This exit has been planned for some time and I am happy to say that unlike the original Guido Fawkes, I got to choose the time and manner of my ending. I leave the Guido Fawkes Organisation in the good hands of Ross Kempsell, one of the smartest operators in the game and a former Guido reporter from way back in 2017. The team is strong with now seasoned news editor Max Young and Eleanor Wheatley as our senior reporter. There is as ever another who shall remain nameless for now – because we always like to have someone who can do undercover work at Guido. My greatest pride and joy over the years has been to see young people who cut their teeth in the Guido newsroom go on to have even more success in the media. It gives me a sense of avuncular pride to see them all prosper. The time is right for me to stand down not least because as I have got older the newest intake of MPs has got younger and the SpAds even younger still, drinking in Westminster bars with them has become tougher and the recovery time much longer.
On a personal level twenty years of 24/7 focus on SW1 politics has been all consuming. There are hundreds of books that have gone unread because I have been too busy scrolling through tweets – an addiction I plan to beat.
Dear readers I want to thank you co-conspirators for everything, the tips, the fun, the exchanges, no doubt you’ll make your views known, as ever, in the comments. You made Guido Fawkes, I can not thank you all enough.
Thanks to GB News here are all the speeches from the night. First up was Harry Cole, the first ever employee of the Guido Fawkes Organisation and now the political editor of The Sun:
Next was my friend and former blogging rival James Cleverly:
Thanks to a few hours of coaching from the legendary speech crafter Peter Botting I think my speech went well:
My successor Ross Kempsell said some nice things:
You are in the good hands of Publisher Ross Kempsell…
Paul Staines
Boris was in attendance at Guido’s 20th anniversary bash on Wednesday night. GB News‘ Adam Cherry (and Guido alumnus) caught up with him to ask if he still thought Guido was the “dung beneath the rosebush of politics“. See for yourselves..
Boris Johnson’s memoir Unleashed is flying off the shelves. Figures show it sold a whopping 67,000 copies in its first three weeks on sale. More than David Cameron’s memoir sold (63,513) in an entire year…
Guido’s done a breakdown of former Prime Ministers’ memoirs released after 2017. And the number of copies sold in their first week on the shelves:
- Boris Johnson’s Unleashed sold 42,528 copies.
- David Cameron’s For the Record sold 20,792 copies.
- Gordon Brown’s My Life, Our Times sold 3,309 copies.
- Liz Truss’s Ten Years to Save the West sold only 2,228 copies.
Meanwhile, Theresa May’s publishers didn’t even bother to advertise how many copies had been sold for her memoir “Abuse of Power”. Must have been grim numbers. Readers are judging the book by what’s beneath the cover…
Boris Johnson says Putin wouldn’t have invaded Ukraine if Trump were president…
“I happen to believe that when Donald Trump says that had he been President, there would have been no Russian invasion of Ukraine. My view is that is a credible assertion.”
Robert Jenrick on the Today programme:
“Can you now give a guarantee to your listeners this morning that no BBC presenter in the future will be exposed as a paedophile, as a number have been in the recent past? No, of course you can’t…”
