Unlike Theresa May, the gaffe-tastic Boris Johnson is sackable. The blond bumbler did himself no favours by upsetting British Sikhs with his gurdwara “clinky” booze talk in a mock Indian accent, or foreshadowing the social care switch before his Downing Street line manager executed the humiliating manifesto manoeuvre.
May-hem’s position is assured as Prime Minister should the Tories win the election, but not so Johnson’s as Foreign Secretary. I hear that Johnson, too often the cause of chaos in the Conservative Party coalition, has made a dangerous enemy in Team May. Nick Timothy, May’s joint chief of staff, is said to be agitating for BoJo to be reshuffled ahead of the Brexit negotiations. Tick-tock.
Unless he has slipped into the building under cover of night, George Osborne hasn’t been seen at BlackRock’s London HQ since signing a £650,000 contract earlier this year, whispers my snout. Perhaps the former Tory chancellor is too busy, work on the London Evening Standard free sheet leaving an editor training on the job looking distinctly jaded. With BlackRock’s speculators nervous about divulging secrets to a budding journalist, the rapacious New York-based capitalist citadel would be forgiven if it wondered whether Boy George is value for money.
He is the son of a toolmaker and a nurse and is named after the Labour socialist Keir Hardie, and his energetic election campaign is fuelling speculation that Sir Keir “Call Me Mr” Starmer will throw his flat cap into the next party leadership contest. A Unite trade union fan of Starmer (yes, they exist) insisted that Camden doesn’t carry the negative Islington baggage of the incumbent. (Starmer represents Holborn and St Pancras, a leaflet’s throw from Corbyn’s constituency.) It may also help that Starmer has fallen out with Peter Mandelson, mastermind of the Blairite counter-revolution. The Prince of Darkness angrily judges the shadow Brexit secretary to be insufficiently Euroenthusiastic. If only the electorate felt the same.
Labour’s deputy and Unite old boy, Tom Watson, has joined the GMB trade union. Sounds like a smart insurance policy when he’s fallen out badly with Len McCluskey. Everybody needs employment protection.
No gushing One Show party political broadcasts for Labour. Jeremy Corbyn and his wife, Laura Alvarez, are declining to follow Theresa and Philip May in discussing boy and girl jobs on BBC1. Corbyn is fiercely protective of his family’s privacy. The other reason, I’m told, is a fear that the Mexican Alvarez’s slight Spanish lilt might reinforce suspicions among some of Labour’s more old-school supporters that he’s a member of the London metropolitan elite.
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This article appears in the 24 May 2017 issue of the New Statesman, Why Islamic State targets Britain