As donations dry up, the threadbare Tories could be forced to move out of their swish Georgian red-brick HQ in Westminster. Kemi Badenoch packing the party’s remaining chattels on to a horse and cart would be a potent symbol of political dispossession. My snout whispered that the distressed tenant is struggling to pay the rent after income plummeted, so the Cons may relocate to more modest premises. The way the polls are heading, a one-bed flat in Croydon should soon suffice. The Tories relocated to grand Matthew Parker Street in 2014 and, in a delicious irony, their historic Smith Square base is now Europe House, London outpost of the EU. Reform UK replacing the Conservatives in Matthew Parker Street might appeal to Nigel Farage’s sense of destiny.
Downing Street is finally waking up to the Reform threat, with Labour’s chief of staff, Morgan McSweeney, inviting Hope Not Hate leader Nick Lowles into No 10 to discuss the community-cohesion charity’s polling on the rise of the far right. Lowles and McSweeney are old muckers, working together to defeat the British National Party in Barking and Dagenham back in 2010. Labour alarm bells are ringing ahead of May’s local elections. Reform is starting to steal Labour voters as well as the Tories’. Hope Not Hate’s mega-poll projected 71 next time – 60 grabbed from Labour plus one luckless Lib Dem.
Keir Starmer is treading in Margaret Thatcher’s footsteps by hiring a voice coach. The fledgling Iron Lady was secretly trained in 1972 by Laurence Olivier. The 20th century’s most famous actor’s sessions included teaching a then education secretary to seduce, flirt and walk with a book on her head to improve deportment. Dramatist and critic Tim Walker’s Radio play When Larry Met Maggie, to be broadcast on 15 February, imagines their encounters. Thatcher, says Walker, was in effect a theatrical invention. Wooden Starmer, muttered a disillusioned backbencher, could play a tree on stage.
Former anti-corruption minister Tulip Siddiq was overheard protesting that an MP can’t choose their relatives. This is true. An MP could, however, choose not to attend a nuclear power deal-signing with Vladimir Putin. Or reportedly accept a London flat worth £700,000 from a figure connected to the authoritarian regime in Bangladesh – a regime in which, say, their aunt, Sheikh Hasina, was once prime minister. Choices have consequences.
Gavin Williamson is setting up a snooker all-party group. In 2023 the former minister was ordered to apologise for sending fellow Tory MP Wendy Morton bullying texts. Right on cue, a party colleague sniffed that mud-wrestling would be a more suitable sport.
[See also: The cost of net zero in the town that steel built]
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This article appears in the 05 Feb 2025 issue of the New Statesman, The New Gods of AI