Guido has long been a fan of slimming down the vast amount of government waste that emanates from Whitehall, even he was a little taken aback by the Telegraph’s front page story that Boris was supposedly planning to slash over half of the Cabinet roles and merge several huge Government departments together. The number of Cabinet posts would apparently be cut from 26 to just 12, with major departments including Work and Pensions, Justice and Transport reportedly set for the chop. Unfortunately it seems that someone was freelancing and speaking only for themselves…

Boris Johnson supporter Damian Green says that reports tonight that Johnson is considering plans to shrink down the size of the cabinet "seems hugely unlikely to me”#newsnight | @maitlis | #newsnight pic.twitter.com/jFNKSzzp3W

— BBC Newsnight (@BBCNewsnight) July 1, 2019

Damian Green was confronted with the plan on Newsnight last night and reacted incredulously. Team Boris have, alas, firmly rubbished any suggestion that it came from them. The Telegraph’s own article merely cites various MPs who now support Boris who have expressed a preference for merging various Government departments, it’s a pretty major leap from there to presenting it as official Boris policy.  Liz Truss as BEIS minister might be up for closing that department…

First big beast to come out publicly for fresh-faced Hancock…

The Information Commissioner’s office has written to MPs to remind them not to share their usernames and passwords with others. Information Commissioner Elizabeth Denham wrote to all MPs this week:

“My office observed reports from social media in early December 2017 in which a number of Members openly revealed their practice of sharing their login details and passwords. I was concerned by these reports and have decided to write to all Members to highlight the importance of following good practice in respect of password management and information security.”

During the Damian Green scandal press reports noted the practice of MPs sharing their passwords with staff. Sharing passwords could give MPs plausible deniability over their online actions…

The letter from the ICO came to MPs in the notoriously impregnable form of a Microsoft Word document. The properties tab in Word revealed the username of the document’s author and members of ICO staff who had edited it. Some way to go to achieve max info sec…

An unrepentant Damian Green tells the Today programme he still believes he was never inappropriate to Kate Maltby and his text about her corset was just “a joke”. Put the shovel away…

Damian Green is still blogging under the title ‘Commons Touch’; his pieces also go out as a newsletter under the same title. Time for a refresh?

“Damian Green will keep his job”, so said ITV’s political editor Robert Peston ten days ago, citing “three well-placed sources” who told him “there should be confirmation on Wednesday” that week. How did he get it so wrong? Peston’s always entertaining blog could have been used to see how the idea of letting Green off would go down with the Lobby. It’s possible the Cabinet Office and Number 10 hardened their position on Green’s fate as the inquiry continued into this week. Or Peston’s “well-placed” sources could just not be that well-placed…