Kemi Badenoch's quest to become Mrs Thatcher
With her uneven public speaking performances and rocky poll ratings, Kemi Badenoch will need the parallels with a young Margaret Thatcher to continue. Luckily, she thinks she's found a further point of comparison, as Mrs T also faced a challenge from a third party. 'Everybody was worried about Jeremy Thorpe, this tall, handsome man who looked like a Conservative and was taking their donors,' Badenoch told Policy Exchange, referring to the Liberal leader.
However, Thorpe was undone not by the leader of the opposition but by his hatching of a murder plot which ended up killing a pet. 'He was a genuine threat until that thing with the dog happened,' Badenoch said. Sadly for Kemi, Reform are yet to have a canine scandal, even if critics say they're keen on dog whistles.
The offices of this paper have seen the odd love story down the years but, under the pressure of a deadline, romance has been known to hit the spike. In her memoir, the journalist Sarah Vine has recalled the trials of writing a column for then husband Michael Gove, who was comment editor of The Times. She was leaving to relieve their childminder when her husband called her into his office. 'He waved the piece in my face, curtly informing me that, frankly, it wasn't good enough and told me to re-write it,' she says. Vine pleaded: 'But I'm your wife!' Gove, the Keats of the Comment Desk, told his beloved: 'That's no excuse for bad copy.'
Vine and Gove's romance did not survive politics, but others have prevailed. For instance, former Father of the House Sir Peter Bottomley has been married to his Baroness wife Virginia since the first Wilson administration, and the magic is still very much alive. At a City of London dinner on Friday, the baroness was giving a speech but her microphone failed. It kicked back into life just as she said: 'I always need my husband to turn things on.' Laughter in the hall, and appreciation from her other half. 'I am glad she notices when I'm not around,' he said.
• Sarah Vine: life as Mrs Gove, and falling out with the Camerons
After driving through a huge and controversial social change last week, Kim Leadbeater went back to the day job as PPS at the Department for Culture, Media and (for some reason) Sport. It didn't go so well. She wrote an email with next week's suggested lines for Labour MPs at DCMS questions, but accidentally sent it to Tory MPs. It's unlikely that they will acquiesce to her request to ask such hard ball questions as 'How is the government promoting participation in sport?'
• MPs vote to pass assisted dying bill — as it happened
As the world becomes increasingly belligerent, we look for reassurance from our allies. Alas, it is not forthcoming from Down Under. Reports in Australia have disclosed a letter from Deputy Chief of the Army, Major General Christopher Smith, who has said that his cadets cannot withstand criticism or 'being yelled at' — an indictment on the land of sledging. He concludes the youngsters are 'not up to scratch' and struggle with 'foundational soldiering skills', including 'navigation, digging pits, putting up wire, and air sentry duties'. At least Smith doesn't seem to be worried about his men's shooting, though it sounds like they won't know which way to point the rifle.
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