Is the campaign to unseat Keir Starmer as Labour leader already under way?
Francesca Perrin, a scion of the Sainsbury dynasty, has given five-figure sums to two of the Cabinet ministers among the favourites to succeed him as PM.
Perrin, worth an estimated £512 million, has given £50,000 apiece to Wes Streeting, the Health Secretary, and Shabana Mahmood, the Home Secretary.
Streeting has long been touted as a potential successor but Mahmood, after taking a tougher line on immigration, has emerged as another possible candidate.
While Perrin – the great- great-granddaughter of John Sainsbury, founder of the supermarket empire – donated £1 million to Labour in 2023, she has given nothing directly to the party since Starmer entered No 10.
Labour are facing difficult elections next May, with Reform UK expected to make huge gains. Some Cabinet ministers speculate Starmer could be challenged if the results are dire.
Perrin’s latest largesse – registered with the Electoral Commission earlier this month – will give Mahmood and Streeting a flying start if there is a leadership contest.
Some Cabinet ministers speculate that Starmer could be challenged if the results are dire
Joan’s Tory Horror Picture Show
At a dinner at London’s Guildhall to mark the 100th anniversary of the birth of Margaret Thatcher, the former Tory MP Sir Conor Burns lavished praise on Dame Joan Collins, the guest of honour.
‘Her performances are known, I imagine, to everyone in this room,’ he said. ‘The Wayward Bus, The Bitter End, Tales From The Crypt, Seven Thieves, Rally Around The Flag Boys, The Bitch, An Orgy Of The Damned,’ he listed. ‘It’s almost as though she was chronicling the modern Conservative party.’
New Cabinet Office minister Chris Ward had a nightmare debut at the Commons despatch box as he tried to explain the Government’s tangled position on the China ‘espionage’ case.
At one point he was reduced to silence after forgetting a question from former Attorney-General Jeremy Wright.
The ill-shaven Ward is likeable enough but Speaker Sir Lindsay Hoyle explained the facts of political life: ‘I feel sorry it is his first outing but if you take the [ministerial] pay cheque, you also take the pain that goes with it.’
You can depend on ‘Dave’
Nigel Farage’s Reform UK are favourites to win this week’s Caerphilly by-election for the Welsh Assembly. But the correct pronunciation of the Christian name of their candidate Llyr Powell has been twisting tongues among party leaders.
It should sound like a gutteral version of ‘Lear’, but chief whip Lee Anderson admits: ‘We call him “Welsh Dave”.’
John Major was easily distracted in Cabinet meetings.
The former PM explains: ‘In came a note with the England cricket score that I would pass to Robin Butler [the Cabinet Secretary] whose great-grandfather was a Victorian cricketer.
‘He would throw it across to Ken Clarke. This drove Michael Heseltine [Major’s deputy] wild as he knew nothing about cricket.’
Sir Keir Starmer is set for a Halloween fright.
Louise Haigh, the cherry-haired former transport secretary, who led Labour’s welfare cuts rebels after Starmer sacked her last November, will make her Have I Got News For You debut on October 31.
Lucy Powell, campaigning to become Labour’s deputy leader, denounces Starmer’s allies and their ‘anonymous briefings’.
But when she was a Cabinet minister, Powell was said to be ‘deliciously informative – leaked like an old watering can’.
