Guido presumes that Sky News presenter and host of the station’s Sunday politics show, Trevor Phillips, will not be taking up his Labour Party membership, which was reportedly reinstated 3 weeks ago. Philips was suspended following trumped-up accusations of alleged islamophobia…

Sky News guidelines clearly state that journalists must adhere to “the principles of fairness, accuracy impartiality, legality and rigour” and that the programme must never “show favour”.  Being a paid up member of the Labour Party membership does bring into question that impartiality….

Phillips, who referred to British muslims as “a nation within a nation” and argued that the centre of gravity of British Muslim opinion was “some distance away from the centre of gravity of everybody else’s”, was apparently reinstated without the matter having gone to a National Executive Committee disciplinary panel. Phillips, at the time, condemned the suspension as political gangsterism by then Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn…

Brandon usually a safe pair of hands and rolled out to do media in difficult circumstances, his auto-cliche really misfiring inappropriately this time.

“His position was untenable and distracting from the wider work that we’ve all got to do to move forward in the pandemic and out of the pandemic; there’s no getting away from that, and I think that’s why Matt’s ultimately made the decision that he did.

As I say, in doing that, he’s put his family and indeed all of us across the UK first because he wants the focus – as the PM does, as we all do – to be on getting out of the pandemic.”

Oops…