Labour is making hay while the sun is shining over Boris and Rishi’s fixed penalty notice charges, as you would expect. Generally it is a good rule that lawmakers can’t be law breakers, though it is the case that ministers receiving fixed penalty notices is hardly anything new. Guido thought he’d wander down memory lane to help contextualise Labour’s performative outrage…

Starting off most recently, Welsh First Minister Mark Drakeford called for the PM to resign as “You can’t be a law-maker and a law-breaker.” This seems to be a new position from Drakeford given his own health minister Eluned Morgan received a speeding fine of £800 just last month as well as a six month driving ban. She remains in situ…

Then we get into the weeds of Blair and Brown’s ministers. Most prominently among whom must be Harriet Harman. While serving as a minister and deputy leader of the Labour Party, Harman was charged with not one, not two, but three speeding offences; in 2003, 2007 and 2010, wracking up a whopping £810-worth of fines and nine penalty points on her licence. Harman has accused Boris of not only breaking laws he made, he broke laws in place to keep people safe. Much like speed limits… 

Fixed Penalty Notice queen Harriet Harman then piroutted and defended Baroness Scotland, serving as Gordon Brown’s Attorney General at the time, when she received a £5,000 civil penalty notice for hiring an illegal worker. While this would have been bad enough, Scotland was a Home Office minister who helped introduce the very legislation under which she received the fine. Scotland said the penalty was caused by a technical error and compared it to a parking ticket, saying “it’s not a criminal offence”. Brown said “no further action was necessary”…

Lastly there’s Liam Byrne, who said yesterday “We cant have a rules based order with leaders who break the rules.” In 2007, Byrne was fined £100 after admitting to using his mobile while driving, as well as receiving three points on his licence. The fine was ironic as, at the time, Byrne had been a long-standing road safety campaigner, tabling a petition in 2005 from constituents calling for tougher penalties for dangerous drivers.

He once told a parliamentary committee that the most dangerous drivers were “serial potential killers” and said he was “shocked” at the leniency of sentences handed down to them.

Gordon Brown tells Times Radio…

“Now my advice is not to take my advice. I think it’s better that he makes his own decisions and does what he feels is right for the Labour party.”

Deborah Mattinson has been appointed as Keir Starmer’s Director of Strategy, starting in July. She says she’s “looking forward to playing a part in helping Labour reconnect with the voters it has lost”. She performed a similar role for Gordon Brown, it didn’t go well, and she eventually quit working for him.

One of the issues was her firm’s Citizen Engagement work for the Brown government at the same time as she did pro bono work for Brown’s political project. Guido felt that the millions she was billing the taxpayers could be cross-subsidising her work for Gordon. In her book (“Talking to a Brick Wall“) about her work for Gordon Brown, she wrote that our stories about the conflict of interests enraged Brown. She stopped working for him as a result.

So it is with amusement that Guido reports that her firm Britain Thinks has, since 2020, been awarded 23 government contracts worth millions to her firm. Britain Thinks has been awarded 3 contracts worth £2.99 million by the Cabinet Office alone in the last year. Despite stepping down as a director, she remains a substantial shareholder in Britain Thinks. Guido is not suggesting a conflict of interest beyond querying whether she really, at heart, wants to make the government more successful. Isn’t it remarkably generous of a Tory government to enrich the Labour Party’s Director of Strategy…