The big talking point as MPs return from their Easter hols is whether Bridget Phillipson has been given a makeover and instructed to smile brightly on TV. Labour colleagues noticed the Education Secretary has started beaming in front of the cameras after previously appearing stern. The warmer tone comes after class troublemakers briefed she could be permanently excluded in a summer reshuffle. A sympathetic colleague who read Roald Dahl’s Matilda to his children observed that Phillipson, when looking less like a tyrannical Miss Trunchbull and more like an engaging Miss Honey, complied with new No 10 tuition for ministers to be happy and confident after their glumness at the Tory legacy had backfired.
Few hunts are, thankfully, likely to prove as inconclusive as the search for who leaked Labour MPs’ LGBT+ group WhatsApp messages after the UK Supreme Court transgender ruling. A suspect, growled an angry member, was identified and flatly denied involvement in the comments reaching public eyes. Of course they did. Long live informants!
There was unbridled joy across the political spectrum in the WhatsApp team managed for Leeds United fans by peer John Mann following their promotion to the Premier League. Lord John Mann of the People, as the baron styles himself, plays the club’s anthem “Marching on Together” on his mobile at meetings. To keep onside, a group including Theresa May’s old mouthpiece Robbie Gibb and DUP ex-MP Ian “Baby Doc” Paisley Jr must require united support.
It’s all kicking off in Worcestershire where two one-time Conservative MPs now in rival parties go head-to-head for a county council seat in next week’s local elections. Stephen Dorrell, a minister during the Thatcher and Major eras, is standing for the Lib Dems against Alan Amos, a single-term Tory MP for Hexham who later jumped ship to Labour before returning to the Cons and in this contest wears a Reform rosette. The national disintegration of Kemi Badenoch’s party is played out locally in Bedwardine.
There was a full house for a mobile prostate-testing clinic on the Westminster estate, with parliament’s male members queuing in droves to be checked. The awareness campaign was championed by the former London black-cab driver Clive Efford, Labour MP for Eltham and Chislehurst. Prostate cancer is the most common cancer in men, with 52,000 cases annually in the UK, and the former shadow minister, 66, is an evangeliser for earlier and regular examinations. He judged doctors to be initially dismissive before his own diagnosis in November 2023 despite a family history. Efford has since had the all-clear. One or more queuers may live because of his efforts.
[See also: Labour is at war over the Treasury]
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This article appears in the 23 Apr 2025 issue of the New Statesman, Divide and Conquer