Sun editor Victoria Newton on Times Radio about the secrecy around Huw Edwards being charged:
“We knew that he’d been arrested on The Sun for months, but we couldn’t write it because the police wouldn’t confirm it officially. So they kept that covered up. Would they have done that for an ordinary Joe Bloggs on the street? Perhaps not. And then the more staggering thing was then he got charged. And for three weeks, the public did not know that he’d been charged. It was only when The Sun found out. And we put it to the Met and the CPS and they eventually admitted it. That is just shocking in a democratic society. Normally, what would have happened in the past is that that paedophile would have been remanded in custody and then and then maybe come back to get a suspended sentence. But at least the idea of doing that is to shock them to see how how terrible it is being remanded in custody. And hopefully the impact is that they don’t do it again. But that didn’t happen today. This judge was happy to send him off for a cup of coffee and so will mind the press out there .I thought that was quite shocking.”
Sun editor Victoria Newton on how they got the scoop….
“The news desk had been contacted by an angry whistle-blower. They claimed to have irrefutable evidence that the married Secretary of State for Health was breaching his own lockdown rules by having an office affair with an aide. My first thought was – bloody hell, what a story, it can’t be true.
The source told us they had footage of Matt Hancock kissing his glamorous adviser Gina Coladangelo on 6 May in his Westminster office. A quick check of the government rules that Hancock himself had devised and demanded that the nation follow showed that kissing someone from another household was most definitely not allowed. This was an open and shut case of public interest – and a contender for story of the year.”
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.”