Starmer's plans for 'Lord Tony' and second coming of the Blairites

2023-06-26

ANDREW PIERCE: Sir Keir Starmer’s plans for ‘Lord Tony’ and second coming of the Blairites

Sir Keir Starmer, in yet another U-turn, last week abandoned plans to close down the House of Lords in his first term and instead announced he will create up to 100 new peers.

If he wins the General Election, the list may well include Labour’s last two prime ministers, Gordon Brown and Tony Blair.

Should he be invited to don the ermine, it would be a remarkable comeback for Blair — and there’s even talk of him being given a seat in a Starmer Cabinet. If that were to happen, he will find himself surrounded by old friends at No 10.

Starmer’s communications secretary Matt Doyle worked for Blair from his first day as Labour leader. And the fundraising department is packed with former colleagues, including Lord Alli, who is head of election fundraising.

Also back in harness is Blair’s favourite tapper-up of wealthy donors Lord Levy. In 2006, Levy was at the centre of a police investigation into the cash-for-honours scandal. Levy denied any wrongdoing and no one was ever charged, but that didn’t stop him being nicknamed ‘Lord Cashpoint’.

So could Starmer give ‘Lord Tony’ a portfolio? The Tories hope so, as Blair is still seen as toxic by many voters for opening the door to massive immigration from Eastern Europe and his dissembling over the Iraq War.

Labour MP Jess Phillips is predictably unimpressed by Rishi Sunak’s breathless assurances last week that ‘it’s going to be OK’, despite interest rates rising for the 13th month in succession: ‘My appliances bleep when they are finished. It seems to be the modern, annoying way. My husband calls it “the everything’s all right alarm”. I see the Prime Minister has been programmed similarly.’

Maggie’s Parting Gift for Sir Ian

Last Tuesday, Sir Keir Starmer posted images of his meeting with Labour luvvie Sir Ian McKellen on Twitter.

But the mischievous thespian likes to remind people his knighthood came not from Labour but from Margaret Thatcher.

As he watched TV news coverage of her demise in 1990, a No 10 flunkey rang to say he was being recommended for a knighthood.

‘Just as I put down the telephone the big black shiny door of No 10 opened and the Thatchers emerged, she was crying a little,’ he said.

‘I suppose the very last thing Thatcher did as prime minister was to organise my knighthood.’

Last Tuesday, Sir Keir Starmer posted images of his meeting with Labour luvvie Sir Ian McKellen on Twitter. But the mischievous thespian likes to remind people his knighthood came not from Labour but from Margaret Thatcher (File Photo)

When Nicola Sturgeon spoke to journalists in the Scottish Parliament last week, she timed her remarks to coincide with the moment Green co-leader Lorna Slater confirmed that Circularity Scotland, set up to run the ditched bottle deposit return scheme, has appointed administrators. It was a pet project of Sturgeon’s. Even after her departure as First Minister — and arrest (and release without charge) in the ongoing police fraud inquiry into the SNP finances — she can’t resist trying to manage the news agenda.

The Commons privileges committee, which censured Boris Johnson over Partygate, has a long tradition of being self-righteous. In 1975, it called in journalists Andrew Knight and Mark Schreiber for publishing a confidential draft committee report in The Economist. ‘It gave us a self-important masterclass . . . and recommended . . . that we be banned from the precincts of Parliament,’ said Knight in a letter to the Times. MPs later ruled no further action.

Poor Penny’s Lost in Podcasts

Commons leader Penny Mordaunt has a waspish take on the number of political podcasts. ‘I wonder what Jim Hacker and Sir Humphrey [of Yes Minister] would have made of it all,’ she quipped at the Parliamentary Press Gallery summer reception last week (File Photo)

‘Bloomberg UK Politics is listened to by people that own the country. Political Thinking is listened to by people who run the country. The Rest Is Politics is produced by people who failed at running the country.’

She added: ‘We are blessed with a plethora of media outlets but it does get confusing. On a recent visit north of the border, I tuned into what I thought was a very exciting episode of Taggart. It turned out to be BBC Politics Scotland.’

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