Guido hears Tory-aligned think tank Onward’s Head of Political Economy Gavin Rice has been hired by campaigning Shadow Justice Secretary Nick Timothy as his new senior adviser. Rice was previously SpAd for Boris and later policy director at the Centre for Social Justice. His main work at Onward was also with Timothy on the Future of Conservatism project which partly aimed at how to reindustrialise Britain. Parties on the right are raiding wonk world to pad out their policy platforms…
Guido hears cash-starved CCHQ is going to take quite some time to furnish its newly-appointed Shadow Ministers with personal advisers. One Shadow Cabinet Minister tells Guido: “They’ve got to sort the money first.” The hope is that in six weeks to two months the Tories should find enough behind the sofa to hire some help…
The majority of previous Tory SpAds have of course alighted to the private sector. A Shadow Cabinet source says everyone is relying on CCHQ and CRD to help with briefs. In the meantime the Shadow Chancellor is writing his own parliamentary questions…
Gudio hears that hilariously some Shadow Ministers are planning on fundraising for cash to hire their own advisers. Labour would often complain in opposition that it didn’t have enough resources for their many PAds. The Tories would give an arm for that problem…
Despite a flurry of speculation about the possibility of a June or July election – which was a talking point before the locals – the chances of that are now basically nil. There was a brief spike in nerves ahead of the PM’s speech on Monday – but that turned out to be irrelevant for the election date. The FT reports that Labour staff were previously on a strict holiday ban which has now been lifted by Labour HQ. Wait until the unions hear about those working practices…
Tory staff were never put on a holiday ban at all – and MPs of all parties have also been busily booking up summer retreats. Chris Philp just this morning said he’d booked holiday for August and, when asked if the election would be in summer, said: “I hope not“. It remains interesting that no whip has been imposed on summer constituency campaigning for Tory MPs, as it has been in previous cycles. They’ll be holding more piña coladas than clipboards…
Any July or August general election would have been highly unusual – the last August election was in 1895, and the last July one immediately after World War Two. It looks like the current SW1 status quo will continue over the summer break. While an autumn or winter election remains most likely, the legal deadline for polling day after this parliament is Tuesday 28 January 2025. He couldn’t, could he…
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.”