Guido has long been a fan of slimming down the vast amount of government waste that emanates from Whitehall, even he was a little taken aback by the Telegraph’s front page story that Boris was supposedly planning to slash over half of the Cabinet roles and merge several huge Government departments together. The number of Cabinet posts would apparently be cut from 26 to just 12, with major departments including Work and Pensions, Justice and Transport reportedly set for the chop. Unfortunately it seems that someone was freelancing and speaking only for themselves…

Boris Johnson supporter Damian Green says that reports tonight that Johnson is considering plans to shrink down the size of the cabinet "seems hugely unlikely to me”#newsnight | @maitlis | #newsnight pic.twitter.com/jFNKSzzp3W

— BBC Newsnight (@BBCNewsnight) July 1, 2019

Damian Green was confronted with the plan on Newsnight last night and reacted incredulously. Team Boris have, alas, firmly rubbished any suggestion that it came from them. The Telegraph’s own article merely cites various MPs who now support Boris who have expressed a preference for merging various Government departments, it’s a pretty major leap from there to presenting it as official Boris policy.  Liz Truss as BEIS minister might be up for closing that department…

To mark the tenth anniversary The Telegraph have done a comprehensive documentary which puts the expenses scandal in context. This section on how they obtained the data is of particular interest to Guido. It is the story that got away and John Wick’s decision to give it to The Telegraph instead of Guido will forever rankle. For the record, Guido was outbid…

IPSO has forced The Telegraph to amend a column Boris wrote in January in which he suggested ‘No Deal’ was the most popular option with the public. A Remainer academic from Reading University complained to IPSO extraordinarily hysterically saying that Boris’ column was “clearly out of the Trump/Bannon playbook.” The piece has now been amended to say…

“In fact, no poll clearly showed that a no-deal Brexit was more popular than the other options. This correction is being published following a complaint upheld by the Independent Press Standards Organisation.”

IPSO is mistaken on this point, IPSO clearly didn’t look at this Opinium poll just before Boris wrote his column and as reported at the time by the BBC:

And it goes without saying that No Deal has been gaining in popularity ever since. This is almost as nonsensical as when another academic reported Amber Rudd’s conference speech to the police as a ‘hate incident’…

Following Friday’s revelations, Lord Hain claims that his breaching of the injunction was “in my personal capacity as an independent member of the House of Lords. I categorically state that I was completely unaware Gordon Dadds were advising the Telegraph regarding this case… Gordon Dadds, a highly respected and reputable international law firm, played absolutely no part whatsoever in either the sourcing of my information or my independent decision to name Sir Philip. They were completely unaware of my intentions until after I spoke in the House of Lords.” Guido understands Gordon Dadds were indeed furious with Hain…

What isn’t explained is how Hain could not know that the firm he advises was involved, given their name is on the front page of the widely circulated injunction to which he was referring. Is he going to claim to be incompetent again – as he did when he was forced to resign from the Cabinet?

The Telegraph’s Editor Emeritus Ian MacGregor tells Guido that, contrary to the rumour reported here on Saturday, “I did not discuss the Green case with Lord Hain. I have not spoken to him for around 5 years to the best of my recollection. I was on holiday last week and was unaware of the identity of the Claimants until revealed by Lord Hain in the House of Lords.” Guido is happy to accept his assurance.

So who did tell Hain? How independent was Hain’s “independent decision” exactly?  He said it was someone “intimately involved” in the case – it is unlikely to be a lawyer. Philip Green is livid of course, “As many people have said, Lord Hain’s blatant disregard of a judgement made by three senior judges is outrageous.” Green takes a very dim view of Hain’s financial relationship with his enemy’s law firm.

A clue to the source is perhaps that when Hain named Philip Green in the House of Lords on Thursday at 14:43, The Telegraph were the first to report the naming an impressively few minutes later. Nobody else noticed…

This piece from the Telegraph letters editor Christopher Howse should have Tory MPs fearing for their political futures. Howse says the paper has been deluged by hundred of letters from furious readers since Theresa May’s Brexit sellout, a level of anger not seen since the expenses scandal.

“By heaven, there have been a lot of them since Friday, when Theresa May held the Cabinet hostage, phoneless, in her Buckinghamshire hideout – hundreds and hundreds of them, whizzing from the electronic Cloud like shooting stars on a mid-August night.

All are read and the Editor takes notice of them, but only a fraction can be published. And not since the summer of the MPs’ expenses scandal in 2009 has such an angry invasion force taken the Letters page by storm. For anger has indeed been their main propellant…

Quite a few, in their anger, declared that they will never vote again. I’m not sure they will keep to their resolve, as the months go by, but it is worrying. After all, the EU’s democratic deficit motivated many to vote for Brexit in the first place. If someone is interested enough to follow politics in a newspaper and then put finger to keyboard to send a letter for publication, it is bad if they are not to be heard through the ballot box, too.”

Have Number 10 and those Tories backing the Chequers deal underestimated the anger of their core vote?

MediaGuido can reveal a major Lobby move: Sunday Express political editor Camilla Tominey is leaving the paper after 15 years to join The Telegraph as their new Associate Editor (Politics and Royals). She is believed to have been poached by Rob Winnett and will have a roving brief to land scoops, big interviews and campaigns, reporting alongside the Lobby and largely based in Westminster. Readers will remember her stealing the show on Question Time.

Camilla was the journalist who first broke the news of Harry and Meghan dating back in 2016, and she’ll be glad to only be doing two jobs rather than the four she had at the Sunday Express. She starts in September. Congratulations – this will set off a bit of a merry-go-round…