The Mirror Crack'd

Steve Barclay, the Health Secretary, was the first guest on this morning's Sunday With Laura Kuenssberg show on BBC1. If Kuenssberg is looking for an alternative career (though why would she when her current BBC contract brings her in a cool £250k pa?) she might try dentistry, as extracting the truth from Barclay was like drawing teeth. But the indomitable Ms K is nothing if not persistent and was clearly in no mood to stop until she had convinced Barclay that the Tories' oft-repeated claim of planning to build "forty new hospitals" was, if not mendacious then at best weasely. It wasn't the number she was querying but the use of the word "new". A new wing was not a new hospital she insisted, any more than a new conservatory constituted a new house. At which point, without actually conceding defeat, the ever-suave Barclay decided simply to let her have her way. Of course, this was just the sort of tergiversation beloved of that arch-weasel, Boris John

Lady Heather Hallett was appointed to head up the goverment's Covid Inquiry in 2021. The Inquiry's terms of reference were agreed in 2022. Both things took place under Boris Johnson's premiership. Now Lady Hallett is engaged in a spat with the Cabinet Office over access to unredacted papers, WhatsApp messages and Johnson's official diary. The Cabinet Office has responded helpfully: "It’s our position that the Inquiry does not have the power to compel the government to disclose unambiguously irrelevant material, given the precedent that this would set and its potential adverse impact on policy formulation in the future". Lady Hallett has replied that it is not for the government to decide what is relevant to her Inquiry and has threatened legal action in the face of continued Cabinet Office obduracy. Oo-er! Meanwhile, Boris Johnson (from Las Vegas, where he was being handsomely remunerated as an after-dinner speaker), has reacted angrily to his legal team's

It remains to be seen whether the puny Rishi Sunak will find the bottle to sack his Home Secretary, Suella Braverman, if she is found to have broken the Ministerial Code in her alleged attempts to get her civil servants and aides to help her avoid embarrassment over her recent speeding fine.  She admits exceeding the speed limit and has now paid the fine and accepted three points on her driving licence. But the potentially damaging allegation is that she asked Home Office civil servants to find a way for her to avoid both by taking a speed awareness course instead, but doing so alone, without members of the general public. It's not clear what her problem was (other than her obvious utter contempt for the electorate) but such a request, if proven, would constitute a breach of the Code and be a resigning or sacking matter.  Speeding, whilst reprehensible, is hardly a hanging offence - even under Braverman's cruel and illiberal regime - after all, she would be in good company when

The British people are easily distracted. No matter how dire the political, economic, social and climatic problems besetting them, a bit of pomp and pageantry, or ritz and glitz, is sure to divert their attention. Just as the country finally bestirred itself from its Covid-induced torpor last year the Queen's death brought the nation to a respectful standstill again. It was a period of sincerely felt mourning, no doubt, but I can't help contrasting (unfavourably) the turnout for the Queen's lying-in-state in Westminster Hall with that for the Big One, Extinction Rebellion's recent four-day protest that was supposed to culminate in a human chain being formed around Parliament.  The hope of the organisers was for an unbroken circle of people arm-in-arm stretching over Westminster and Lambeth bridges and along The Queen's Walk on the South Bank. Whereas the queue to pay respects to the late Queen snaked for miles downriver to Tower Bridge the latter couldn't even m

An urgent question was raised in the House of Commons this afternoon by SNP MP, Joanna Cherry, about the arrest by the Metropolitan Police of peaceful protesters at the King's coronation at the weekend. Replying for the government, Home Office Minister, Chris Philp MP, basically parroted the line that the police are operationally independent and had a very difficult job to carry out in exceptional circumstances. In other words, move along, nothing to see here. Replying for Labour, Shadow Home Office Minister, Sarah Jones MP, said that she had warned of precisely such unintended consequences during the debates on the Public Order Bill, hurried through Parliament ahead of the coronation.  The new Act gives the police sweeping powers to handle protests, including a clause relating to going equipped to lock-on - in other words carrying anything that the police consider might enable protesters to attach themselves to railings or other structures. Ms Jones said that she had questioned wh

Man in Hat Sits on Chair. The front cover of s atirical magazine, Private Eye, succinctly summed up yesterday's coronation of King Charles III in Westminster Abbey. In essence, that's what an enthronement boils down to. There shouldn't really be much more to be said but, unfortunately, in a constitutional monarchy such as ours, there is always more - much more. As the first-born son of the reigning monarch of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, Charles' destiny (and constitutional duty) was to succeed his mother as sovereign on her death. It couldn't have been anticipated at his birth in 1948 that Queen Elizabeth II would sit on the throne for seventy years, beating her great great grandmother Victoria's record by six years to become the longest reigning monarch in British history and only just missing Louis XIV's world record by two years. But, then, Louis came to the throne of France aged five. It's been a long and often frustrating wait for Charles bu