The billionaire Tory donor Michael Ashcroft’s dream of reinventing himself as the Pollfather has suffered a knock. Sky News is excluding the Conservative peer’s regular surveys from its election poll of polls. Lord Ashcroft isn’t a member of the British Polling Council and industry rivals mumble about his transparency, particularly because he generated headlines early this month with a surprisingly big Tory lead and a Green tsunami, rather than a surge.
Few MPs work harder than Dan Jarvis, a former major in the Parachute Regiment, yomping across Britain to fight Labour’s ground war against the Tories. The shadow justice minister, who won the 2011 Barnsley Central by-election, is tipped for great things. Labour comrades remember his baptism of fire on entering Westminster. “Dan served in the special forces in Afghanistan, leading men on deadly missions in the mountains, enduring deprivation and fear for weeks on end,” one colleague recalled, “but nothing prepared him for the indignity of serving in Harriet Harman’s culture team.” They say Hattie’s boot camp was the real making of him.
Ukip is well shot of the MEP Amjad Bashir, who has defected to the Tories. Bashir, sinking in controversy and seemingly forgetting that he was once a member of George Galloway’s left-wing Respect Party, is shaping up to be the worst signing since Chelsea wasted £50m on Fernando Torres. Bashir’s Yorkshire compatriot Jane Collins, however, is an MEP whom Ukip wants to save. The Purple Shirts asked Gavin Millar QC, who defended the Sun successfully in the Plebgate battle with Andrew Mitchell, if he’d represent Collins in a libel action brought by three Labour MPs – Kevin Barron, Sarah Champion and John Healey – after the Ukip MEP claimed that they knew about the Rotherham sex scandal. Millar’s chambers declined. The QC, the brother of Cherie Blair’s one-time adviser Fiona Millar (who in turn is the significant other of the corporate PR Alastair Campbell), had already been hired by the Red Barron and his friends.
Nicola Sturgeon is going up in the world. The eagle-eyed Tory Margot James, no slouch in the height stakes, observed that the SNP’s pocket chieftain was wearing unfeasibly high heels as she tottered into Broadcasting House for an interview with Andrew Marr. The stilettos may double as a handy weapon, should Alex Salmond launch a southern coup in a hung parliament.
A radar-lugged informant overheard staff in the tearoom talking as they sliced a tray of shepherd’s pie into individual pieces. Billy Bunter Tories have been taking double helpings and paying for one. The new dividing line in politics is portion sizes.
Kevin Maguire is associate editor (politics) of the Daily Mirror.
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