25 July 2024

The power tussle: Sue Gray vs Morgan McSweeney

Your weekly dose of gossip from around Westminster.

Downing Street’s dismissal of a No 10 turf war between Sue Gray and Morgan McSweeney is greeted with grim chuckles by Spads, ministers and the great overlooked. The power tussle is real, whimpered my snout, neutrals fearing they’ll be unprotected if not in Gray’s girls’ gang or McSweeney’s boys’ brigade. Last time Labour was in office the fault line was between followers of Tony Blair and Gordon Brown. Will the rift this time be between the chief of staff and the campaign chief in a battle for Keir Starmer’s ear? One Labour veteran said of Sue Gray: “She knows how government works and that is now nine-tenths of the job, so Gray will win.”

Smooth actor Tom Cruise is a top flatterer. He’s the Hollywood superstar while film fan Steph Peacock could walk British streets unrecognised. Yet seated at the same table for lunch at Wimbledon, it was the global icon who introduced himself to the Barnsley South MP by congratulating her on becoming a culture minister. Swooning Steph blushed. No mission will be impossible in government for her.

Double blow for Ian Blackford, who dodged electoral eviction by quitting parliament. The anti-British-establishment Scots Nats blocked a proposed dissolution knighthood for their onetime Westminster leader. The ex-banker, who considers himself an ever so humble crofter, appears destined to remain plain Mr Blackford.

Boris Johnson fanboy Mark Jenkinson’s lost his appeal. Jumping from boundary-changed Workington to hitherto Tory safe Penrith and Solway didn’t keep him a seat on the green benches; Cumbrians preferred Labour’s Markus Campbell-Savours, who coincidentally is the son of former MP (now peer) Dale C-S. Now I hear that onetime Ukipper Jenkinson failed to secure a seat on Seaton parish council. They’ll have to tackle dog fouling without his anti-woke views.

Love across the Labour political aisle with news that Starmer’s press secretary, Sophie Nazemi, is engaged to James Schneider, who performed a similar role for, er, Jeremy Corbyn. Well-wishers giggled that leftie activist Schneider, a well-heeled Bollinger Bolshevik, joined a noisy Gaza protest outside a Starmer speech. Awks.

Labour Lords fume many were asked to be unpaid ministers. Those unable to survive on £361 tax-free a day should join a trade union or vote for stronger employment rights under Angela Rayner’s new deal for working peers.

So far nine ex-MPs have asked a Tory-supporting Sunday newspaper editor for columns. Nine negative election verdicts suggest none would appeal to readers.