16 October 2024

Who made Keir’s cut?

Your weekly dose of gossip from around Westminster.

Afraid to criticise King Keir, increasingly frustrated Labour newbies instead target Starmer’s courtiers. Ice Chancellor Rachel Reeves’ ears must be burning. Speculation over hefty tax rises in the Budget after the winter fuel cut is creating jitters across the self-styled party of business. She could cost Labour the next election, asserted a querulous newbie. Starmer rules with an impregnable three-figure majority and the next contest is five years away, but novices with too little to do and zero experience are already restless.

There is class war in the Conservative race ahead of voting. Robert Jenrick’s supporters scoff at solidly middle-class Kemi Badenoch’s student job in McDonald’s, saying it made her no more working class than him visiting Paris means he’s French. Her camp briefs that Jenrick’s provincial pitch is undermined by a private education and owning not one but two properties in London. Tories do the politics of spite so much better than Labour.

The Father of the House, Edward Leigh, could bore for Britain and regularly does. Parliament’s longest-serving MP vowed to “lie down on the line” if a proposed Grimsby-to-London train doesn’t stop at Market Rasen in his constituency. My snout overheard the Jag-driving Tory transport spokesman Alec Shelbrooke whisper, “That’s possibly not as persuasive as he thinks,” to shadow cabinet line-manager Helen Whately.

“Speak to me,” pleaded Starmer, passing a begging bowl to the global elite, “to Rachel, to Jonny, to Ed. And our new minister for investment, Poppy.” Cabinetologists noted who didn’t make the cut in the Prime Minister’s list. No Angela (Deputy PM, Rayner), David (Foreign Secretary, Lammy), Peter (Science Minister, Kyle), Douglas (trade policy, Alexander), and deffo no Lou (Transport, Haigh). “Poppy” is the £4bn tech firm Darktrace co-founder Poppy Gustafsson, parachuted into the House of Lords, triggering resentment among those overlooked in the Commons. She is the latest Labour peerage of Starmer’s reign; the replacement of 92 to-be-axed hereditaries is under way.

Word is that cash-strapped Conservatives demanded GB News pay for the dubious privilege of hosting this week’s leadership clash between Badenoch and Jenrick. The channel declined and the Tories backed down. Rival broadcasters should offer to pay not to screen viewer-losing bouts between the two. Tory internal democracy is a profit-driven enterprise. Pay-to-play rules imposed a £50,000 entry fee on the four contestants at the party’s Birmingham beauty parade, with the final pair charged another £150,000. Big money from pound-shop politicians.