Former Labour spin doctor Alastair Campbell popped up on the Today programme this morning to tout his new book, and in the process of plugging the dossier, the Rest is Politics host dealt a characteristic jab at the Tories: 

“One of the problems we’ve got with politics is that the gene pool for politics is getting narrower and narrower and narrower. Particularly at the top levels. Particularly, having had 13 years of this Tory government. And I think we’ve got to broaden the gene pool. That means getting more young people interested in going into politics. It means getting people from different backgrounds going into politics.”

Indeed, back in the good ol’ Blair days, under Campbell’s watch, surely Labour were leading the charge on diversity? Not quite. Credit where credit is due, in 2002 Labour brought in the first black cabinet minister, Paul Boateng. Yet, for Tony and Alastair’s first five years at the helm, the cabinet was precisely 0% ethnically diverse, and the pair soon ran out of steam on the issue. Only two Black and Ethnic Minority (BAME) individuals would ever make it to Blair’s cabinet. Quite the war room on diversity. 

In comparison, Sunak’s cabinet is 16% BAME, Truss’s was 30%, and Johnson’s 18%. The average age of Blair’s revolutionary 1997 cabinet was 51, whereas Johnson’s was 47.7, Truss’s 49.3, and Sunak’s has risen incrementally to 52. Of course the Labour Party has never elected a woman leader never mind Prime Minister. Thirteen years of Tory government with younger and more diverse cabinets than Blair ever had. Bad Al’s lying again…

With Starmer announcing his five missions for government today, it’s worth remembering what happened the last time he made a set of pledges. Amol Rajan, for one, wasn’t going to let the former leader forget as he pressed the Labour Leader on the Today programme.

“Why should people trust you when you’ve abandoned so many of the pledges you made in your leadership campaign?”

It’s a fair question…

Starmer completely ignored it. The Labour leader started to respond about his new missions, and after first being interrupted by Rajan, posed his own preferred question, again on his new missions. Rajan didn’t let this slide, and continued to press Sir Keir on his broken pledges.

Amol eventually forced Keir to try and explain unconvincingly why he ditched these “points of principle” on nationalisation and university tuition fees – with the Labour leader blaming unforeseen circumstances. An impressive absence of foresight from Captain Hindsight.

Steve Bray has been doing what he does and making an nuisance of himself. On a Today Programme Brexit debate last night, Bray repeatedly heckled from the audience – reheating the old classics of “you lied!” and “Tories out!”. Eventually, his anti-Brexit tirades became too much even for the BBC to put up with and he was booted out. Where’s Lee Anderson when you need him…

Thankfully, Jacob Rees-Mogg was on hand to provide some insightful and characteristically polite running commentary:

“Steve, it’s nice of you to come and join us. For those of you listening at home, Steve Bray stands outside the House of Commons everyday shouting. I’ve said to him many times, he should stand for election if he wants to get his arguments across and he is trying to disrupt us this evening. He’s now being taken out so that we can carry on with discussion.”

Bray has also been quick to get his own side of the story out there. On Twitter, for the few co-conspirators not blocked by him, he’s posted a picture of his bruised nose, described how he was “kneed in the balls” and admitted his “ribs and right side are very painful”. Bray’s beef with the BBC might not end there, while he accepts the corporation was correct to kick him out, he claims “the violence and manner was totally out of order, uncalled for & illegal”. On this rare occasion, Guido’s inclined to back the BBC.

UPDATE: Co-conspirators can watch Bray’s Bruising for themselves here.

An almost comedic interview on the Today Programme this morning had Home Secretary Priti Patel attempting to defend the Government’s new rules on ‘mingling’, appearing to admit that two families of four are now prohibited from stopping and chatting in the street, even at a distance. Guido’s not sure he can bare to hear the word ‘mingling’ said any more times…

Be careful how many people you stop to speak to on the street, the Covid Marshals could get you. Either that or your Government-endorsed curtain twitching neighbours…

The BBC informed the nation this morning that “last month was the hottest month on record globally as well as in the UK.” Today Programme listeners heard:

The trouble is that’s not what the EU funded Copernicus climate bulletin the BBC cited actually says. It does say that globally May was the warmest May in their data record, it also says “May was colder than average for Europe”. The BBC seems to have invented their claim about the UK from thin air…

In reality, the Met Office tracks monthly temperature in the UK. Users can see that there have been five Mays on record with a higher “Mean daily maximum temp”, and a full fifteen Mays with a higher Mean temperature. Pretty shoddy from the Beeb…