Monday
In the chaos of the post-referendum world and the ongoing Tory party leadership elections, the business of government continues. If not very effectively. Jeremy Hunt and Nicky Morgan have been seen punching the air in celebration that almost everyone in the country has missed the teachers going on strike and the junior doctors rejecting their new contract. Hunt’s and Morgan’s jobs might have been made a little more awkward had Labour been in any position to offer some effective opposition. Ever since most of Labour’s front bench – along with a slew of junior ministers – resigned a week or so ago in an attempt to precipitate a leadership election in their own party, Jeremy Corbyn has been struggling to fill vacancies. He has finally got round to filling the shadow cabinet – though not without a little doubling up as Dave Anderson got Scotland and Northern Ireland, Paul Flynn was given shadow leader and Wales, and John Trickett combines shadow business secretary with lord president of the council – but there are still 50 junior ministerial posts left unfilled as no one wants to do them.
Tuesday
During the first round of the Tory leadership election, there were campaign teams for Liam Fox, Stephen Crabb and Theresa May parked outside the committee room where voting was taking place. There was no sign of anyone from Michael Gove’s or Andrea Leadsom’s teams. The received wisdom was that both sets of supporters were too terrified of being taken out by Psychopathic Mikey to dare show their faces. One MP told me he had received an email from his local vicar pointing him towards a new online game called “Slap Michael Gove”. I went back to my desk to check it out. As mindless therapy it couldn’t be bettered. On the screen you get a cartoon version of a swivel-eyed, bewigged Mikey and, with each click of the mouse, a giant hand gives him a slap. Lamp! Shazaam! It is also immensely popular therapy. When I logged in, 182 other people were busy slapping him and the total number of slaps Mikey had received had risen to 2,882,162,092. And counting.
Wednesday
An email came round saying that Tony Blair would be giving a press conference at an unspecified time and at an unspecified place after the publication of the Chilcot report. At the bottom of the note was the instruction to reply if you wanted to be accredited to the event. Within minutes I got an email back from Blair’s office saying, “Sorry we can’t, we have limited space available.” Either Blair’s preparations for the aftermath of the Chilcot report were no better than the failure of his postwar planning or he just didn’t want sketch-writers. Almost certainly the former. My colleague, Rowena Mason, who was admitted received a confirmation email telling her she had 15 minutes to get to Admiralty House. Once there, she was subjected to three separate security checks in a government building before finally being admitted. Anyone might think Blair had something to hide.
Thursday
Andrea Leadsom’s CV has become ever more confusing as her Wikipedia page has undergone several rewrites since she announced she was standing for leader of the Conservative party. Having told the Commons in 2010 that she had worked in fund management, she has now made things much clearer by saying that she had never claimed to be a fund manager. If Andrea’s CV is like most people’s, this probably means she was the lift attendant in an investment bank. In the interests of transparency, I have now decided to publish my own CV. 1976 – Ice-cream salesman in Oxford Street (sacked for falling asleep standing up by my machine). 1982-84 – bookshop assistant. 1984 – applied to work at a theatre box office but was turned down after saying, “I don’t really”, when asked why I wanted the job. 1985 – insurance salesman (sacked after mis-selling myself a policy). And that’s it. The reason I started writing as a freelance was because it was the only job I could think of where I wouldn’t be needed to explain such a ropey CV.
Friday
For some reason entirely unrelated to her own paper having backed Theresa May, and her husband facing political oblivion, there was no Sarah Vine column in the Daily Mail this week. Here’s what we’ve missed. “My bid to become Britain’s second female prime minister has been thwarted by two other women. Of all the ironies! Whatever happened to loyalty within the sisterhood? After all I’ve done for that rather overdressed Theresa May – check her out in the Mail Online’s sidebar of shame, I rest my case – and the arch fantasist Andrea Leadsom, they both had the temerity to challenge me head on. To make things worse, Mikey has been absolutely useless. He just sits around sobbing, ‘I can’t believe my career is over. You promised me I only had to do in Dave and Boris.’ Why does it have to be all about him? It’s me who is the real victim here. I haven’t had a wink of sleep. Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow I will continue writing this rubbish...”
Digested week, digested: the Poundland MacGoves
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