Angela Rayner has made history – though not in the way taxpayers might have hoped. She’s the first Deputy Prime Minister to land herself a personal, taxpayer-funded ‘vanity’ photographer, costing £68,000 a year. LBC’s Nick Ferrari wasted no time this morning, tearing into Rachel Reeves over the glaring hypocrisy. Rayner, who once raged against Boris Johnson’s “coterie of vanity photographers,” is now indulging in the very same perk. Reeves floundered as she tried to justify the splurge while ordinary Brits are told to tighten their belts. Apparently, “difficult decisions” on public spending don’t apply when it comes to a luxury snapper for the Deputy PM…

Meanwhile, Downing Street’s new senior photographer will be on a modest salary of £48,000, while the Deputy Prime Minister’s personal photographer enjoys a salary that is 41% higher. As Guido reported last month, the Government Communication Service has quietly launched a massive hiring spree, adding 42 new roles across departments, costing an eye-watering £1,991,800 at the taxpayer’s expense. Quite the backdrop for Reeves’ black hole doom-and-gloom speech later today…

Paymaster general Nick Thomas-Symonds was asked by Nick Ferrari this morning why the government is capitulating to unions while removing the winter fuel allowance for some pensioners. Thomas-Symond’s response was the classic “it’ll cost more not to settle“:

“There is an enormous cost to not settling these disputes that would apply  in terms of the junior doctors because you’d obviously have had huge disruption to patients, and it applies in terms of ASLEF and the train drivers.”

Unhelpfully for Labour the exact unions it has appeased have already indicated they will be coming back for more. Junior doctors got a bumper backdated pay rise – the BMA is already plotting more strikes for next year. ASLEF rail drivers have had their pay boosted to an average of about £70,000 with no extra conditions on their lax working rules – Mick Whelan says that will keep him quiet for a maximum of six months before going for a new offer. And so it begins…

Thomas-Symonds all but confirmed GPs will be getting their demanded 11% pay offer:

“Well the answer to that, it’s an answer I used to give you in opposition, which was about getting around to the table and actually settling with people.”

Now we know why Reeves is so insistent tax rises will have to come in the budget. Someone has to pay for it…

Nick Ferrari asked Labour’s National Campaign Co-ordinator Pat McFadden a simple question on LBC: “Where would a trans woman go to use the bathroom in a restaurant that’s just got a man and a woman’s facility”? Rather than answer it he reacted with faux-exasperation: “You’ve enjoyed asking this question I think in recent days, Nick.” Is Labour getting impatient for polling day?

Ferrari hit back: “Because [Starmer] keeps changing his position.” This comes after Starmer said this week that biological males with gender recognition certificates do not have the right to enter women-only spaces, itself following Bridget Phillipson’s refusal eight times to answer the same question. Even after the Cass Report they can barely bring themselves to say it…

McFadden continued:

“Look, we want to protect women only spaces in the end this is for the premises and I think with this uh issue you know, asking politicians this one day after another in some kind of game… it’s right to protect women only spaces uh so I’m not sure the Equality Act needs to be changed… let’s act with a bit of kindness to people uh rather than using them as some kind of gotcha question in an interview.“

Which says precisely nothing…

Michael Ashcroft’s “Red Queen” biography of Angela Rayner has already generated a lot of headlines, Guido is of the view that the biggest story in the book is yet to be told. In an almost throw-away paragraph at the end of Chapter Nine in the book is an explosive tale:

“What is perhaps more intriguing is that, throughout this time, there was alarm bordering on paranoia in select Labour circles that the extramarital affair of a senior party figure other than Rayner was in danger of being exposed. Most damagingly, the male politician at the centre of the claims is said to have enjoyed a long-standing relationship with a woman that had lasted until after his own wife was pregnant with their first child. The politician’s lover, who is herself a public figure, then went on to have a child of her own. She left the name of her child’s father off her child’s birth certificate. This led to concerns that the Labour politician was in fact the child’s father, but there was no evidence to support that.”

It is a story that hacks are gossiping about in private, the story has been going around in legal circles for years and Guido hears that more than one newspaper is only now trying to stand the story up. Labour’s senior campaign operatives are well aware of the story and are said to have prepared a counter-strategy if it breaks during the election campaign.

Most Lobby hacks are aware of the name of the “senior party figure” in question and yet seem strangely incurious to investigate. Guido has however seen the birth certificate in question where the father’s name is left blank. Curious…

Given how a recent PM was asked over and over again about his private life before and once he was PM, including how many children he had, Lobby hacks seem strangely lacking in curiosity during this campaign. Perhaps we will have to wait for someone like Piers Morgan or Nick Robinson to ask the classic question “Have you ever been unfaithful to your wife?” Maybe Nick Ferrari could ask the same question he asked of Boris; “How many children do you have?” 

Reeves says of Angela Rayner’s ‘expert tax advice‘: “I haven’t asked to see the details and I haven’t asked to see the tax returns or the, tax advice, legal advice of any of my colleagues. This has got to be on a basis of trust.” Nick Ferrari couldn’t help but ask the shadow chancellor whether her 5,000 new HMRC inspectors would be able to ensure “everybody pays their fair share of tax”. Seeing as all you have to do to satisfy the Labour leadership is say that everything is above board according to secret advice…

“What if I’m able to say I’ve got private advice and I did nothing wrong and I’ve paid the right amount of tax, as is the case with one of your senior colleagues?“

Reeves said it was “almost 10 years ago now when she was married to her ex-husband before she was a Member of Parliament“. Rayner was still married to her husband at the time. She also would have had to submit her self-assessment return by January 2016, in respect of the year when she sold her property. In other words, when she was an MP…

At least Reeves has got the date right – this occurred 10 years ago as opposed to 15 as Rayner repeatedly claimed to Newsnight. Rayner gets Reeves’ “trust” and we get 5,000 extra tax inspectors to fill Labour’s imaginary “tax gap”…

New Radio Joint Audience Research (RAJAR) figures for Q4 2023, now released, make for interesting reading. GB Radio is up 32,000 listeners to 430,000. TalkRadio is also up as BBC listening figures stagnate and the BBC’s local radio stations see a whopping 10% decline from Q3 to Q4. GB News’ combined TV and radio output still comfortably beats TalkTV’s…

Over at LBC Nick Ferrari has overtaken James O’Brien’s listening figures and to take the throne at the station, gaining 45,000 listeners in the last quarter. That’s 35,000 ahead of O’Brien, who is steadily losing listeners…