Labour’s wannabe leaders are accusing the party of profiteering in the scramble to wear Ed Miliband’s tarnished crown. One of the four grumbled that it’s daylight robbery to charge candidates £5,000 to access the party’s 240,000-strong membership list.
Another moaned that the costs add insult to injury when the official hustings seem designed to prevent debate. Rigid rules and stopwatch answers favour prepared lines over free discussion. Banning clapping, hissing and booing by members – to save time – turns political meetings into church congregations.
The party counters that the hustings are fully booked, but the sense that an important competition is a sideshow, failing to engage most of the electorate, doesn’t augur well for Labour’s future.
Liam Fox, the Tory former defence secretary, is putting out feelers to find out if David Cameron will reward his loyalty by making him chair of the intelligence and security committee. The backbencher has rarely rocked the Tory boat since his cabinet resignation in October 2011 over his unofficial adviser Adam Werritty’s access to the Ministry of Defence and Fox remains plugged in to US defence networks.
Colleagues mutter that the restless Fox, who apparently continues to use a BlackBerry instead of an iPhone because the email is considered more secure, needs a job. The North Somerset MP’s wife calls his phone “Teddy” – he takes it to bed with him.
George Loveless and the Tolpuddle Martyrs would be thrilled. The Trades Union Congress museum in the Dorset village has a wedding licence. Unison’s Lynn Barrer is to tie the knot with Gary Kilroy of the Transport Salaried Staffs’ Association at this month’s festival, then pose for photos under the sycamore tree where Loveless, a Methodist preacher, and his fellow agricultural labourers met in 1834 before landowners had them transported to Australia. A honeymoon closer to home, in Spain, will follow.
The Blackpool North and Cleveleys MP, Paul Maynard – the parliamentary bag carrier for the Energy Secretary, Amber Rudd – is not the brightest spark in the department. The Tory’s dimmest idea was to ask Labour MPs to contact his office “to share your supplemental or topical question” before quizzing Rudd in the Commons. The opposition, unsurprisingly, declined.
Tessa Jowell’s friends (as we call them in the trade) whisper that her hubby, the corporate lawyer David Mills, would prefer her not to run for London mayor. Mills was burned by the public fallout of a conviction, subsequently quashed, for allegedly receiving a £380,000 bribe from Silvio “Bunga, Bunga” Berlusconi. The Labour couple separated but are reconciled and Mills shuns the limelight. This contest could get tasty.
Kevin Maguire is the associate editor (politics) of the Daily Mirror
Content from our partners
Related
This article appears in the 01 Jul 2015 issue of the New Statesman, Crisis Europe