Big changes afoot over at Northcliffe House as Mail+ – the online branch of the Daily Mail definitely not to be confused with the Mail Online – makes some major changes to cut losses. Guido learns that Michael Crick has gone along with most of their video team being made redundant last month. Editor Gordon Thompson has also left, supposedly of his own accord. It is noticeable that the production of expensive original video content is being dropped at a number of digital media outlets. Clearly Lord Rothermere, like Guido, is unable to figure out how to make news-focused video content commercially viable…
The Mail mole who alerted Guido to the Mail’s de-Cricking also said that, amid rumours of a £20 million loss, Andrew Pierce and Sarah Vine are also facing the loss of their podcasts. No doubt they’ll be relieved not to do them…
Sarah Vine has launched an honourable defence of Gove in her column today, after mockery that the Levelling Up Secretary wouldn’t commit to taking in Ukrainian refugees under his own scheme announced on Monday. Writing in the Mail, Vine clarifies:
“…he is no longer living in the family home we jointly own, so it’s not in his gift. He is too honourable to point that out, so I thought I would do it for him.”
While this is fair up to a point, Gove is hardly homeless. He has in fact taken up residence of the Foreign Secretary’s luxury London pad at Carlton House Terrace. Guido presumes that Michael is only using one of the £25 million home’s three bedrooms, leaving oodles of space for a whole Ukrainian family to move in. After IPSA specified last night that MPs can use their taxpayer-funded pads to house refugees, Guido presumes Michael won’t want to be left behind…
Sarah Vine has used a tell-all Tatler interview to deny that her ex, Michael Gove, had an affair that caused the marriage to break down. Instead she blames the stresses of political life:
“despite all the rumours, his only mistress was politics. That’s what he is in love with. He is genuinely in love with politics.”
Adding, “The mistress wins in the end. It’s all about making sure she is happy.”
Unlike the Cabinet’s prior marriage breakdown, in the form of Matt and Martha Hancock, it sounds like the couple’s relationship has remained cordial:
“It’s not because we hate each other, it’s because I can’t look after my family and myself and be a wife of politics.”
Vine claims her “ulterior motive throughout my entire life was to stop my husband being prime minister because I can’t think of anything worse.” Now there’s nothing stopping him…
Despite cringing with horror, the Westminster village owes a debt of gratitude to Michael Gove for providing a full bank holiday weekend’s-worth of Twitter content, after being filmed in a Scottish nightclub. Theresa May would be proud.
While Michael is yet to respond to the incident – other than a “friend” denying he tried to get out of paying the £5 entry fee by boasting he was the “Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster” – 18-year-old daughter Beatrice has had some thoughts. A number of TikTok comments from her claim Michael’s been up in Scotland “to see his “family””, joked “he’s more of a child than me” and topped it off with the classic child-of-divorce line “Bro idk he’s not MY dad no more”
A video from her referencing the clips also appears to call her dad “a national embarrassment”
Guido wouldn’t expect anything less from a teenage daughter…
