LOTO have clearly taken yesterday’s poll that 1 in 8 Labour voters deem the English flag “racist” to heart, making a salient effort to show their celebration of St George’s Day. Starmer released a touching video on X of his own “personal moments” that he was “proud to be English”– his family holiday to the Lake District, his love of football and of course the Law. Quintessential…
Meanwhile, Rishi Sunak shared a modest photo of himself with a St George’s flag mug, and Emily Thornberry has remained noticeably quiet about the Patron Saint Day. Real proof of patriotism would be to make this a national holiday…
UPDATE: Meanwhile on Whitehall…
Maybe that’s Rishi under there…
In the first spat of the now-returned PMQs, Starmer jibed about Liz Truss’ new book and asked Sunak if anyone with a mortgage agreed with her that the mini budget was “the happiest moment of her premiership“. Sunak had one thing to say in response:
“All I’d say is he ought to spend a bit less time reading that book and a bit more time reading the Deputy Leader’s tax advice!“
Cue the loudest roars from Tory benches in quite some time…
UPDATE: Sunak scored a second hit over Rayner’s secret tax advice: “Simply publish it and get a grip of the situation… he’s more than happy to help Hizb ut-Tahrir but refuses to help his own Deputy Leader.“
According to the legal dictionary “Wilful blindness, also known as conscious avoidance, is a judicially-made doctrine that expands the definition of knowledge to include closing one’s eyes to the high probability a fact exists.” Presumably Sir Keir Starmer, Britain’s former chief prosecutor, is familiar with the concept. It does however give him plausible deniability and, he will have calculated, an excuse if the “why didn’t he question the legal advice” question arises. Not exactly leadership demonstrating integrity.
Starmer has just refused three times to answer the question posed by ITV – “Should Rayner resign if the investigation finds she has broken electoral law?” Rayner said Boris should resign as soon as the police investigation into him started. Starmer has said in the past that both he and Rayner would quit if they were found to have broken the law – no such commitment this time. He looks miserable…
Rishi got a grilling from callers on LBC this morning. Of course, William Wragg resigning the Tory whip before the party made him came up. After Sunak agreed with Hunt’s comments that Wragg was “courageous“, Nick Ferrari prodded the Prime Minister further, pointing to Labour’s argument that the whole Wragg saga shows his “weakness”. Sunak was quick to hit back…
“When it comes to weakness, Keir Starmer still hasn’t answered any questions properly about what’s going on with Angela Rayner…this is someone who is, as far as you believe the media, who will stroll into 10 Downing Street this year”.
Tetchy but fair…
An interesting nugget emerged at the last Labour NEC meeting on the 26th March. Labour is powering through candidate selections at such a rate that senior local members aren’t even being told by the central party. They are finding out who their own candidate is online after selections have been made…
Longtime NEC member Ann Black reveals in her minutes:
“I apologise again to CLPs who are still awaiting a parliamentary candidate, or who feel they have had insufficient choice. With support from other representatives I repeated requests for regular communication with the “non-battleground” seats. Some CLPs discovered their candidate through social media, others were informed of shortlists 12 days after the candidates. Shortlisting panels were proud of having arranged a diverse group of candidates, but the NEC must then take responsibility for supporting them and building connections with local parties where necessary.”
Labour is considerably ahead of the Conservatives when it comes to confirming parliamentary candidates for the upcoming election. The Tories still have a significant number of defensive seats to select in, and recent bungled selections leading to the reopening of the process has led to delays. If the starting gun on the election was fired soon, Labour would be quicker out the traps. In many seats Labour has been campaigning with a confirmed candidate for many months…
