Sub-par Shadow Ministers shouldn’t expect to waltz straight into a government department if Labour win in 2024. Despite publicly insisting he’s “happy” with his current team, party insiders say Starmer is still planning to fast track certain newly-elected MPs “straight to ministerial office” after the election, quickly dumping lacklustre performers and replacing them with trusted Blairites. There’s a general view that with so few shadow cabinet members having government experience, courting back old faces with the immediate promise of a red box will project competence. It’s the same justification used for appointing Sue Gray as Chief of Staff. The likes of Douglas Alexander wouldn’t be spending much time on the backbenches…
Rumours continue to swirl about the return of other ‘big beasts’, including David Miliband. When asked about a comeback on Andrew Marr’s show last November, the former Foreign Secretary didn’t rule it out. He’s amping up his UK media appearances recently – despite being based in New York – having showed up on Sky News just last week. Whether he’d be offered the same job again to tease him back is another matter; David Lammy is expected to stay put. By coincidence Guido has noticed that an increasing amount of fundraising advertising for the International Rescue Committee (President and CEO, David Miliband) can be seen on screens in the UK. Featuring David Miliband of course:
Elsewhere, another ex-Labour MP is rumoured to be plotting a triumphant return: Dr Paul Williams up in Stockton South. Not exactly a big beast, although after so many NHS strikes, it’s good to hear doctors are at least looking to get back to work…
It doesn’t look like Paul Williams hasn’t learned much since his botched campaign in Hartlepool. Co-conspirators will remember how old social media posts showing the former Labour MP muse over his “favourite Tory MILFs” resulted in a grovelling apology (just days before he lost the by-election) in which he claimed “I wouldn’t dream of making comments like this now”. At the time, Guido thought Williams jumped the gun a bit – the tweets were a decade old, and people change a lot over ten years…
Not Dr. Paul, as it turns out. Yet another social media post has emerged from just three weeks ago which shows he’s still at it:
A bit dry…
It looks like Labour is once again building a shortlist of one for an upcoming by-election, with Kim Leadbeater currently the only person in the running for Labour’s candidacy in the Batley & Spen contest later this summer. Clearly learning the wrong lessons from their attempted coronation of Dr. Paul in Hartlepool…
Leadbeater – who only became a member of the party a few weeks ago – claims she has ‘never really seen [herself] as a political animal’, yet has nonetheless been thrust to the front of the pack, with councillors Shabir Pandor and Salma Arif both ruling themselves out following Leadbeater’s announcement. Nominations only opened yesterday, and close at 5pm this afternoon…
LabourList’s Sienna Rodgers also claims that Labour is expected to ‘waive the membership issue‘ to allow Leadbeater to stand despite her recent entry to the party, with members casting their votes on Sunday. Labour knows what it’s doing here: running the sister of Jo Cox in her own former seat is no accident, though rushing her into the candidacy so openly might raise some eyebrows…
What led to Labour’s historic loss in Hartlepool will no doubt be argued over by Corbynites and the Shadow Cabinet for the next few weeks in terms of policy and national strategy – as they are already doing this morning. Guido suspects insufficient time will be dedicated to examining just how poor was Labour’s candidate choice for the by-election: Dr. Paul Williams. Co-conspirators knew the obvious all along…
Given how precarious the electoral landscape was for Labour in Hartlepool, with a huge Brexit Party vote ripe for the Tories to win over, it was obvious from the start that selecting a Remainer like Williams was Labour taking the area for granted. Shortly after Guido first broke the news of incumbent Mike Hill’s resignation, Williams was spotted deleting pro-People’s Vote tweets. A sure sign he was about to try for the candidacy.
A day later, Guido exclusively revealed Labour was about to stitch the process up for Williams, compiling a shortlist of one and admitting to local activists both he and the party “aren’t quite as well informed as we’d like them to be re the town and our electorate”. LabourList editor Sienna Rodgers claims her B’nB host raised the stitch-up with her when she arrived in the town, despite not knowing she was there for the by-election.
Deleted tweets made headlines once again when it was discovered Williams had once posted about “Tory MILFs”. It wasn’t long before Guido unearthed more posts from him joking about the size of his manhood. Keir Starmer then fell flat on his face after wrongly claiming his candidate had deleted both the MILFs tweet, and posts in which he sucked up the Saudi regime after they paid for a junket to Saudi when he was an MP.
Locally the biggest scandal surrounding Williams erupted when Guido revealed he personally had been jointly responsible for a commissioning report that removed local hospital services from Hartlepool. It was Hartlepool TV what won it…
The icing on the cake finally came when Guido unearthed a deleted tweet from Williams in which he boasted about jetting off to Paris to eat foie gras – putting Peter Mandelson’s infamous ‘mushy peas’ story to shame.
This woeful campaign finally culminated in a car crash interview with Victoria Derbyshire, in which he was confronted about his MILFs tweet, his role in the hospital closure, and his Remainer beliefs – something he claimed the people of Hartlepool didn’t care about. This morning’s result shows how wrong he, and Labour, were…
Labour’s Hartlepool candidate Paul Williams came unstuck this morning after Victoria Derbyshire pressed him on Guido’s revelation that he personally recommended cuts to local NHS services. Williams claimed he “took part in a consultation with the community on a decision that had actually already been recommended before I was involved with the commissioning group”. Locals may struggle to reckon with this defence…
Asked why he didn’t do anything to stop it, Williams simply said he left the commissioning group soon after and made efforts to undo the very cuts he recommended. What a record…
Derbyshire then followed up Andrew Marr in quoting Williams’s ‘Tory MILF’ tweets, with Dr Paul stammering through a bizarre apology:
“So I’ve said sorry for that…I’d just actually come back from spending four years working as a volunteer in Africa, I went to my first ever political conference, and that was a conversation that I overheard at a dinner table […] I didn’t know who any of the people were who they were talking about…if I had my time again I would have condemned it, what I did was tweet about it.”
If Dr Paul wins he may well go down as one of the shakiest by-election campaigns in recent years…
Hartlepool TV has returned fire after Angela Rayner accused the husband-and-wife team of being “US-based misinformation peddlers” for reporting Guido’s scoop that Paul Williams cut local NHS funding. Albeit failing to reject the substance of the story…
Responding to Labour’s deputy leader, Hartlepool TV’s Pam Gooderham said:
“We all stand by our findings. Sorry Angela, if it looks like a duck […] The Labour Party could not have picked a worse candidate for Hartlepool than Dr. Paul Williams […] they aren’t mad about the report, they’re just mad they got caught out.”
Pam’s right, this “pseudo-comedic right-wing blog” stands by its findings…
Angela’s troubles in Hartlepool don’t stop there. Following Labour’s limp-wristed revelation that the Tories’ candidate had spent time living in the Cayman Islands, Rayner tweeted:
“The Conservative candidate in the Hartlepool by-election has more connection to tax havens than she does to Hartlepool.”
Unfortunately for Rayner, Paul Williams himself offers a defence of his opposition, telling a 2019 Westminster Hall debate that “living for a long time in a different culture gives you particular insight”.
Better luck next time Southside…
