• To the Spectator’s summer party, a surprisingly jolly affair given the forecasts of imminent social and financial armageddon. And no one was jollier than Piers Morgan. The MailOnline megaphone and ITV breakfast show presenter tracked Monkey down to say that Speccie columnist Rod Liddle had been delivered by a taxi driver who had said “I’d vote for that Piers Morgan, rather than the lot we have”. Then along came BBC North America editor Jon Sopel to rue the number of interviews with Donald Trump managed by Morgan (who crowed: “I’ll be interviewing him live from the Oval Office soon”). Next in what can only be assumed was an organised effort, FT digital comment editor Sebastian Payne came over and announced that it was Morgan who had inspired the Pink ’Un’s baby-faced wonk wrangler to go into journalism. A simian hissy-fit was narrowly averted when Payne quickly added that it was the romping alleged “diaries” entitled The Insider as opposed to the former News of the World and Mirror editor’s journalistic output that had sparked his ambition. But still...
• With telling tardiness, shadow culture secretary was one of the last of the front bench posts to be announced by Jeremy Corbyn in his enforced reshuffle after many of the previous shadow cabinet resigned. White smoke has finally been spotted, though, and John Whittingdale’s new opposite number is Kelvin Hopkins, a former trade union economist and councillor who turns 75, eight years older than Corbyn, next month. On his somewhat sleepy website (which unpromisingly informs visitors he is not currently an MP since “as parliament has been dissolved” there are no MPs “until after the election on 7th May 2015”), a love of jazz – Hopkins honked a sax “semi-professionally” back in the pre-Beatles era – is the sole personal interest or CV item relevant to either culture, media or sport. It’s a sign of Labour’s recent chaos that he is the fifth shadow cult sec in the past 18 months, following Harriet Harman, Chris Bryant, Michael Dugher and Maria Eagle.
• Tony Blair was guilty of “deception, negligence and naivety”, said the Sun’s post-Chilcot leader, condemning George Bush and Blair’s assumption of being able to quickly transform Iraq to a liberal democracy as “insane” and adding that Iraq “posed no imminent threat to us”. Quite a turnaround from 2003, when the paper (then under rookie editor Rebekah Wade, now Rebekah Brooks) marched in lockstep with the rest of the Murdoch press worldwide in backing Blair and Bush and was so vehemently gung-ho that it produced a “dartboard” for readers to “aim your own missiles” at the “war wobblers”. Apparently now removed from the paper’s website, it has been preserved by a smart Tweeter and includes such anti-war figures as Robin Cook and Charles Kennedy - both guilty only of holding 13 years ago the position the Sun holds now - alongside other targets such as George Galloway and French president Jacques Chirac.
• Two women are in contention to succeed the suave Oxford-educated incumbent, though in contrast to the Tory party shenanigans the last man standing (James Purnell) is still in the running. That looks to be the position in the race to be the next BBC director general, following Tony Hall’s reshuffle last week in which Anne Bulford was promoted to deputy director general (the equivalent of Game of Thrones’ “Hand of the King”) and Charlotte Moore to director of content. Also advancing the cause of gender equality was a reduction in board members improving the proportion of women: from five out of 16, under one third, in the previous set-up, to five out of 13 so far in the new board. It’s thought likely the yet-to-be-chosen director of nations and regions, a board post replacing three exiting (male) “nations directors”, could also be a woman, meaning near-parity.
• A limited 10-week run ending on 10 July must have seemed sensible when Peston on Sunday made its ITV debut in May; it was widely assumed that David Cameron would remain in office whatever the referendum result, and the Commons would be beginning its summer hols on the 21st. Things now look very different, making it awkward that Pesto bowed out for an extended break this weekend when politics is particularly turbulent and transitional: a Tory leadership campaign that is also a contest for No 10’s keys, political sunset for the Bullingdon boys, mutinous Labour MPs mulling a challenge to Jeremy Corbyn, Brexit and its myriad repercussions.
