Nervous whispers against Kemi Badenoch could erupt into furious jeers because of her U-turn to oppose a Football Governance Bill initially proposed by the Tory government she was a minister in. Now the bill is being reintroduced by Labour, Con MPs worry the popular Stuart Andrew could walk – the shadow culture secretary having hailed this legislation as the most radical overhaul of the game’s governance since the Football Association’s 1863 formation. He, of course, was sports minister when the bill was first unveiled. Andrew quitting would be an own goal for a Kemikaze managing a thin parliamentary squad.
The tale of two Labour sackings is generating ill-feeling among MPs from the upper end of England with pointed accusations of a north-south divide under a Prime Minister from the Home Counties in a London seat. A very senior and prominent figure in the House of Commons was overheard growling in his northern accent that it was unjust that Keir Starmer instantly demanded Sheffield Heeley MP Lou Haigh’s resignation as transport minister yet clung to his Camden neighbour, Hampstead and Highgate’s Tulip Siddiq, before her inevitable resignation as a Treasury secretary over her family’s links to corruption allegations. Two months and 160 miles between the pair is brewing resentment among Labour’s northern cohort moaning into warm flat beer.
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