Dear Co-conspirators,
On Wednesday night co-conspirators, friends, politicians and the best of the Westminster media pack gathered in Pall Mall for Guido’s twentieth anniversary dinner celebration.
As you would expect from a Guido party the booze flowed freely – for once however I was stone cold sober because I was going to deliver a speech (see below) which I did not want to stumble over. After six general elections, three referendums, eight Prime Ministers and having now even seen off my fourth Spectator editor, I am finally logging off the blog. If a week is a long time in politics, 20 years is an eternity.
Counting my mis-spent youth in student politics, apart from a foray in the City, politics has been my life for four decades. It remains to be seen how easy it will be to detox after being at the centre of things in SW1 for so long. This exit has been planned for some time and I am happy to say that unlike the original Guido Fawkes, I got to choose the time and manner of my ending. I leave the Guido Fawkes Organisation in the good hands of Ross Kempsell, one of the smartest operators in the game and a former Guido reporter from way back in 2017. The team is strong with now seasoned news editor Max Young and Eleanor Wheatley as our senior reporter. There is as ever another who shall remain nameless for now – because we always like to have someone who can do undercover work at Guido. My greatest pride and joy over the years has been to see young people who cut their teeth in the Guido newsroom go on to have even more success in the media. It gives me a sense of avuncular pride to see them all prosper. The time is right for me to stand down not least because as I have got older the newest intake of MPs has got younger and the SpAds even younger still, drinking in Westminster bars with them has become tougher and the recovery time much longer.
On a personal level twenty years of 24/7 focus on SW1 politics has been all consuming. There are hundreds of books that have gone unread because I have been too busy scrolling through tweets – an addiction I plan to beat.
Dear readers I want to thank you co-conspirators for everything, the tips, the fun, the exchanges, no doubt you’ll make your views known, as ever, in the comments. You made Guido Fawkes, I can not thank you all enough.
Thanks to GB News here are all the speeches from the night. First up was Harry Cole, the first ever employee of the Guido Fawkes Organisation and now the political editor of The Sun:
Next was my friend and former blogging rival James Cleverly:
Thanks to a few hours of coaching from the legendary speech crafter Peter Botting I think my speech went well:
My successor Ross Kempsell said some nice things:
You are in the good hands of Publisher Ross Kempsell…
Paul Staines
Labour has given away the Chagos Islands to China-aligned Mauritius, the move being slammed as “weak” and “outrageous” by hacks and Tory benches alike. Starmer and Lammy have managed to dodge the heat, pushing this decision through during recess—convenient timing, keeping them safely out of the firing line in the Commons…
It was less than a month ago that Jonathan Powell was appointed as the special envoy on talks. And just a few days ago, Lord Kempsell was told by ministers that “it was too early to speculate on timelines and conclusions” on negotiations:
Nine days ago, the government asserted that no conclusion had been made. They say a week is a long time in politics, yet how can this decision have been made in such a short period of time?
There will be long sessions of soul-searching in the offices of UK pollsters this morning as the Guido team’s highly scientific whiteboard-based prediction beat every single final MRP projection they put out. All but two constituencies are now decided. Ross Kempsell is officially the victor, beating the rest of the team and every single UK pollster’s final seat MRP prediction for accuracy…
Guido has crunched the numbers and found that an average of the team’s predictions is closer to the actual result than all of those expensive and overhyped MRP final seat forecasts. YouGov came closest to matching Guido’s gold standard…
If you don’t believe it, you can check the underlying data tables here. Variance is the difference between actual seats and the predictions – the lower, the better. Collectively we are what Dominic Cummings would describe as super-forecasters. Why hire the pollsters when you can just check Guido…
Speaking to Sky News off the back of Rachel Reeves’ Air Passenger Duty hike, Ryanair chief executive Michael O’Leary said:
“Labour is dependent on those Red Wall seats, and yet every move she makes poisons economic growth and damages the UK’s recovery… it’s the Chancellor who stumbles from policy misstep to policy misstep… I think her policy decisions are incredibly stupid.”
