A side note to the emerging story today that Starmer is set to make failing Mayor of London Sadiq Khan a peer to buy his silence after the expected Labour implosion at this summer’s local elections. Starmer has form when it comes to peerage appointments…
For all the hand-wringing about Tory proposals over the years, Starmer has already appointed more peers than any of the previous four prime ministers – and he’s barely two years into his premiership. That means Starmer has already made more new peers than Sunak, Truss, Johnson and May put together. The stats are eyebrow-raising…
Starmer is ramming the Chamber with dozens of key allies and former advisers – despite his previous complaints about Tory moves. He just appointed 25 Labour Peers in December. Along with reforms such as the removal of hereditary peers, the net effect is a political attempt by Labour to take control of the upper chamber…
Starmer needs the votes because his legislative agenda is getting shredded in the Lords, with big time failures on Chagos, workers rights, education and other issues. Labour claims it wants Lords reform but is pouring its own people into the House quicker than any recent government…
Steve Yemm has told GB News’s Christopher Hope that up to 40 of his fellow Labour MPs have written privately to senior Cabinet ministers demanding a rethink of Miliband’s plan to end sales of new petrol and diesel cars by 2030. Nearly one in ten of the PLP…
Speaking on Chopper’s Political Podcast, Yemm said:
“Some of us are really concerned because we meet with workers, we meet with management and we hear the same thing. There’s real unanimity around this question. Some of us are very concerned about jobs in our constituencies. And so, we are making our views known to government… We’re in a position where we’re being heard now, but it’s really important, of course, that we keep having that conversation and move it forward.”
Guido members will know plenty of Labour MPs were passing around Henry Tufnell’s Sun column earlier this week, which let rip over Miliband’s zealotry. Labour MPs who know this crusade is putting their own seats in jeopardy are getting braver in criticising it. If all the profiles on Miliband this week are anything to go by, the ‘real Prime Minister’ still isn’t interested…
Trump this afternoon:
“The British said ‘we’ll send our aircraft carriers’, which aren’t the best aircraft carriers by the way. They are toys compared to what we have.”
Imitating Starmer, he said: “‘We’ll send our aircraft carrier when the war is over.’
“I said “that’s wonderful, thank you very much’… don’t bother. We don’t need them.”
Fuming…
Starmer has claimed this morning that it is “a little bit far-fetched” to draw a link between the timely theft of Morgan McSweeney’s phone and the Mandelson files. The quote is vintage Starm-bot:
“Well the phone was stolen. It was reported to the police. There’s a transcript of the call in which Morgan McSweeney gives his name, his date of birth, the details of the phone and the police confirm that it was reported.
Unfortunately, there are thefts like this. It was stolen. It was reported at the time and the police have acknowledged and confirmed that that is what happened.”
The idea that somehow everybody could have seen that sometime in the future there would be a request for the phone is, to my mind, a little bit far-fetched.”
Again, this line is total nonsense. The phone was reported stolen in October, after Mandelson’s sacking. Labour was already bracing for the Tories to use a humble address motion to extract evidence. Is it ‘far-fetched’ to expect McSweeney to tell the police he was the Chief of Staff? Or at the very least back up the phone? Which usually happens by default anyway…
Rattled…
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.”