It’s not just a few Labour MPs using employment practices the party wants to ban through its “Make Work Pay” push. If you trawl through job adverts for Cabinet Ministers it turns out that almost all of them have specifically violated their own stated policy on employment rights and “insecure work.” One rule for them as usual…

• 16 Cabinet Ministers including Reeves, Cooper, Miliband, and Lammy have hired roles which include working outside of regular hours and on the weekend. SpAds and staffers will be furious they don’t have the “Right to Switch Off”…
• 7 Cabinet Ministers including Rayner, Streeting and Kendall have hired on “insecure” fixed-term contracts.
• 6 Cabinet Ministers including Lammy, McFadden, and Darren Jones, have hired with long probation periods. The bête noire of Labour’s employment rights plans…

Dodds, Hermer, and Angela Smith are the only Cabinet Ministers who haven’t hired using these nefarious practices. That’s 86% of the Cabinet. It’s almost like arbitrary restrictions on voluntary working arrangements are a bad idea…

Rishi Sunak popped along to a Tory donors’ dinner last night, cap in hand, hoping to take in a few pennies ahead of the general election. In return, he handed out bookmarks thanking the party’s benefactors for their continued support, with each Cabinet Minister listed inside along with the book they’re planning to read this summer. A co-conspirator passed one on to Guido… 

Penny Mordaunt’s favourite book of the summer is… her own. Tom Tugendhat, meanwhile, will be spending recess reading The Worm in the Apple by Christopher Tugendhat, his uncle. Suella Braverman is reading “Trans: When Ideology Meets Reality”…

Rishi himself is still a big fan of Riders by Jilly Cooper, which by Cooper’s own admission, contains “great” sex scenes. And people criticise Rishi for being too bookish…

James Cleverly has diplomatically warned Cabinet colleagues to shut up after yesterday’s day of chaos, in which collective responsibility broke down on everything including the 45p u-turn, immigration numbers and uprating benefits in line with inflation. Speaking on the BBC this morning ahead of Liz’s big speech, the foreign secretary warned:

“All Cabinet colleagues ultimately are going to have to abide by collective responsibility… I think it’s always better and easier to feed ideas, particularly when you’re in government and have access to the Chancellor and the PM, feed your ideas directly into the centre of the system…”

On TimesRadio he also implied yesterday’s comments from Braverman, Mordaunt and Clarke – among others – were inappropriate. Guido hears Cleverly’s speechwriter had to edit a swear word out of the Foreign Secretary’s speech earlier this week; we can only imagine how many expletives Cleverly wanted to use in response to yesterday’s farce…

Cabinet Ministers have not been shy in freelancing on economic policy over the last few days, with Suella Braverman now attacking the Government’s reversal of a cut to the 45p rate of tax. Speaking to Christopher Hope this afternoon, the Home Secretary expressed her “disappointment” at the U-turn, and criticised the rebels who effectively “staged a coup” against the PM. She’s not one to mince her words…

The blue-on-blue fighting didn’t end there, with Levelling Up Secretary Simon Clarke taking to Twitter to support Suella:

Suella speaks a lot of good sense, as usual. https://t.co/EHEPhhZ0sX

— Simon Clarke MP (@SimonClarkeMP) October 4, 2022

Jacob Rees-Mogg was also quick to voice his disappointment at the scrapped cut at a fringe event this afternoon, although he claimed to recognise the politics of the move. This all comes in the context of public cabinet battles over benefits, and Penny Mordaunt’s attacks on government comms. Meanwhile backbench agitators continue briefing out plans to rebel, with some now even claiming they’re holding “crisis” talks about Liz’s leadership. Truss has been PM for 28 days. Not quite the honeymoon period she would’ve hoped for…

In case you missed last night’s “People’s Forum” with Liz Truss on GB News, one of the most eyecatching moments came when Liz went further than she has with any other hypothetical Cabinet appointments. Asked by a member of the public about her plans for the make-up of government, Liz inquired if they had anyone in mind:

Audience:“I would like you to give some opportunity to maybe people that you might not know as well at the moment… certainly somebody who fired the imagination of the public was Kemi Badenoch and I’d really like to see her given a meaty role.”

Truss: “Do you have any ideas about what that role should be?

Audience: “Oh well, Foreign Secretary! There might be a role going there!”

Truss: “Look, I don’t want to get ahead of myself and this leadership campaign is still going on, but I can tell you that I will make sure the best players in the Conservative Party are on the pitch if I’m elected leader… Kemi – I’ve worked with her as Women & Equalities Minister – we’ve taken on a lot of the agenda of people who are trying to deny that women are women and so on, so I think she’s absolutely brilliant and I would definitely want her as part of my team if I’m successful.“

Whilst not an explicit commitment, it sounded like a firm hint of promotion. The news made a lot of members – and high-profile figures like Nikki da Costa and Toby Young – very happy…

Boris attended his last Cabinet today and had a nice old shindig by all accounts. Despite the government spokesperson confirming there were no snacks or refreshments – not even ice lollies – there were a few presents, and a round of applause for the PM. Nigel Adams also gave a speech commending Boris’s time in office, followed by a school photo.

Boris was gifted a six-set first edition of Churchill’s war books; surprisingly not something the ex-PM’s biographer didn’t already own. Guido also learns Boris was given wines that reflected significant dates in his life and political career: 1964, 2008, 2012 and 2019. He also got wine from other countries that mean a lot to him, including Ukraine and Greece. Wine time Friday set to be a fun one this week…