It’s trouble in paradise for Starmer’s top team. Chief of Staff Sue Gray is said to be throwing her weight around, already clashing with Starmer’s Head of Political Strategy Morgan McSweeney. The Sun reports that ‘McIavelli’ has been made to move desk twice, each time further from the Prime Minister. Sue’s been getting her claws out…
Despite Downing Street trying to understate the reported ‘turf war’ between the two Number 10 staff, there’s persistent talk of Gray’s actions causing a stir within Starmer’s inner circle. Guido hears the delays in appointments of junior ministers and SpAd selection blockages are more due to Gray than reported. It seems Gray isn’t just grinding the gears of McSweeney either, with whispers that her ways are also sending Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster Pat McFadden into a spiral of frustration, who was overheard saying: “this won’t end well”. Grumbles from others seem to be met with a ‘Keir knows how I work‘ justification from Gray. Though notably she didn’t go to last week’s NATO summit with the Prime Minister. Madness in her method?
Downing Street hosted a ‘farmer’s breakfast’ yesterday ahead of Rishi Sunak unveiling his support package for British farmers. The event saw farmers and industry leaders gather in the leafy gardens of No 10 to break bread and cook sausages. Among the attendees was a prominent farmer in the agricultural community and a potential donor. One Sunak’s team was eager to win over…
Guido hears that in a bid to impress this potential donor, a member of CCHQ’s fundraising team offered him a complimentary helicopter ride back to Cheshire. The farmer accepted the offer, rearranging his schedule and postponing business in the Midlands to wait for the ride. However, the chopper never showed up. It was repeatedly delayed and, after five hours, the offer was abruptly cancelled. The farmer was reportedly very upset by the mishandling of the situation. Quite the way to chop up ties with a potential donor…
The weekly tradition of the cross government meeting of Special Advisers (lamely known in the village as ‘SpAd school’) has somehow survived through multiple Tory administrations. The meeting tends to leak when things are going badly. As the Sunak regime winds up, it’s fair to say it’s leaking like a sieve…
Guido is told by several SpAds present at the meetings that Downing Street Chief of Staff Liam Booth-Smith has finally resurfaced to head up the increasingly thinly attended gathering. The chatter is that he had avoided them for six weeks, leaving it up to Deputy Chief of Staff Will Tanner to try and rally the despondent troops…
Guido’s moles complained that both Booth-Smith and Tanner would arrive, list trivial successes of the week like “women in sports announcement from DCMS,” meanwhile ignoring news leading stories such as Lee Anderson defecting to Reform, and thereby “ignore the elephant in the room“. Many in Downing Street and Whitehall are simply going through the motions, having missed the boat on the private sector milk round. Meanwhile, insiders say open tensions between key personalities at the top of the building continue. The shine has come off spadding…
They called him the “Treasury Travolta” – his leather jacket and unbuttoned shirts known far and wide in SW1. Now Guido can reveal the secret past life of Rishi Sunak’s top adviser and No 10 Chief of Staff, Liam Booth-Smith. It sings…
Back in the mid-noughties, when Booth-Smith actually referred to himself as Scott-Smith, the political aide tested his singer-songwriting chops in the studio and at live pub performances. The aspiring indie artist then announced: “The time has now arrived for Liam to present his works for the pleasure of the public” and released an E.P. entitled “August Varlet” in 2007. He embarked upon a UK tour in the same year, performing in cities like Sheffield, Liverpool, and London. Guido’s not sure what the album title’s precise artistic meaning is, although “Varlet” is defined as “a man acting as a boy or servant” or a “dishonest or unprincipled man”…
Guido leaves it to his readers to guess what the words to Liam’s song “‘Anybody I Know” mean:
“Take what you want, but it’s not mine to give away
Why should I care if your face isn’t remembered
You got it worse than anybody I know.
Peer through the storm, the path don’t seem that wide
Pay for your love with a Cornish donkey ride
Climb up on high with a suicide payment plan”.
Unfortunately for Liam he tried to take off just as the UK indie scene was at its most sleazy and least original. No 10 must have been a backup plan. Despite the tour and imaginative title, Guido hasn’t been able to track down any remaining copies of the album…
Guido sent Liam’s lyrics to a senior Westminster rock-and-roller and got quite the response:
“The prescience of Liam Booth-Smith is breathtaking and his lyrics clearly speak to his tortured relationship with Rishi Sunak. The meanings of ‘You got it worse than anybody I know’ and ‘the path don’t seem that wide’ are self-evident, and the ‘climb up on high with a suicide payment plan’ must refer to Rishi’s deal to take the Tory leadership without facing a membership vote. It’s only the tantalising ‘pay for your love with a cornish donkey ride’ that remains unclear. It must be a sneak peak into the manifesto“.
If he doesn’t fancy busking Guido would be more than happy to host Liam’s comeback gig…
UPDATE: Liam sheepishly tells Guido “It was the least embarrassing thing I did at 19 years old“.
It looks like Rishi left his keys inside when he popped out of No 10 for a photo op with Mark Rutte on Wednesday. They both had a good look around for them before getting let back in…
Number 10 are putting out slick (ish) graphics to celebrate one year of Rishi – minus the errors and deletions. CRD sent out a note with a new Sunak name gaffe (“SUANK”). Not the first time they’ve had this sort of trouble…
It’s now clear that Sunak’s party conference and policy blitz failed to spin itself into the much promised boost – and endlessly promised big attacks on Starmer do not appear to have materialised. As Guido has covered, as the one year mark passes, Rishi’s personal polling is down on all fronts. Where will the Tories be one year from now?
