Safeguarding minister Jess Phillips appeared on Newsnight last night to discuss the Casey report to deny ever turning a “blind eye” to the rape gangs. She said those who wanted to speak out were “being told to keep it it quiet by people from within the Labour party and Maggie Oliver, herself a whistleblower, says Labour and the Tories have both turned a blind eye… not me – I have never turned a blind eye I never would shy away from calling a problem what it is.” Not my fault…
When Badenoch called for a national inquiry in the new year it was over the recent decision of Phillips herself to block central government intervention in Oldham. She wrote to the council:
“I believe it is for Oldham Council alone to decide to commission an inquiry into child sexual exploitation locally, rather than for the Government to intervene… I wish you every success in your pursuit of restoring public confidence in the services that Oldham Council is providing to safeguard and protect children.”
Phillips and Yvette Cooper also said their diaries were too busy to meet with the leaders of Oldham Council. This attempt to rewrite history won’t work…
Louise Haigh – convicted fraudster and former transport secretary – popped up on Newsnight last night to complain about the “misogynistic” and “sexist” culture in Downing Street, lamenting that “male advisers” are targeting her “female colleagues” with negative briefings. She moaned to presenter Victoria Derbyshire:
“I’m really fed up of opening the papers and reading briefing against my female former colleagues and I was really angry at the weekend to see the response to the electoral defeat that we had suffered at the hands of Reform to be that we should sack two female northern cabinet ministers… I only ever seem to read briefing against my female former colleagues.”
When Derbyshire pointed out that Ed Miliband – a man – receives his fair share of briefings, Haigh retorted that he doesn’t get it “anywhere near as badly as my female colleagues do.” Guido suspects the briefings against Haigh had a little more to do with her fraud conviction rather than her gender…
Newly appointed Treasury minister Torsten Bell ended up on Newsnight last night to talk about Liz Kendall’s benefit cuts and restrictions. The former Resolution Foundation chief was forced to say he would not be able to live on £70 a week but backed the changes towards a “sustainable benefits system” because “more people will be working”:
“I sat in the chamber today and heard people say ‘I’m worried about this aspect of the change’ but there’s not enough focus on the disaster that is happening in our country today. We are seeing much faster growth in claims for disability benefits than we are seeing actual levels of disability particularly for young people.“
This is of course an excellent point by Bell – rising claims of mental health issues are behind much of the ballooned benefits bill. When the last government tried to tackle this issue, though, Bell said “in practice DWP will find it very hard (impossible probably) to totally separate out physical/mental health/disabilities” and that restrictions “would end up affecting people with physical disabilities too.” When Suella Braverman proposed reducing the benefits bill in general back in 2022 he even said he was “terrified“:
“Terrified by how swiftly we’ve gone from ‘we reluctantly have to cut benefits to pay for our essential tax cuts’ to ‘we actively want to cut benefits to punish the work-shy. We’ve got amongst the highest employment rates on record”
Guido, for one, welcomes Torsten’s volte face here to a sounder mode of dealing with the cost of benefits. He even argued with John McDonnell who accused Bell of lying for claiming the option was to keep the Tory system or go for Starmer’s cuts. That sound you can hear is portraits of Bell being taken off the walls at the Resolution Foundation…
Labour’s backbench unrest will rumble for some time with the impact assessment of the cuts set to be released next week with the Spring Forecast and a vote of MPs in May. Starmer may be in for trouble yet…
Asked by Lobby hacks about his past comments on Trump (“any UK politician who gave Trump the time of day should be ashamed right now”) Burnham was blithe:
“Politicians say things throughout their career, but now the important thing is to focus on the moment you are in.”
Were it so easy…