11-05-2025
ANDREW PIERCE: The reward for betraying your party? £600 a day
When Tory MP Natalie Elphicke defected to Labour last May, most of us assumed she would be rewarded for her treachery. How right we were!
Elphicke, whose opportunistic move appalled most of her new-found Labour colleagues – she'd backed Liz Truss for the Tory leadership and was a hardliner on immigration – was last month made chairman of the Defence Housing Strategy review team.
This aims to improve the often lamentable condition of homes used by military families.
Her salary is £600 a day. Nice work if you can get it.
Elphicke, who stood down from Parliament at the last election, was once a champion of the Tory Rwanda migrant scheme. She then defected, arguing Labour would stop the small boats.
Which makes her deluded as well as greedy.
Under Labour, record numbers of migrants are crossing the Channel, to the horror of her former constituents in Dover.
The Government seems determined to sell out our fishermen – part of its 'reset' with the EU.
And that means we can expect some particularly telling contributions from Nigel Farage, the Reform UK leader.
Farage is now the proud owner of a commercial fishing boat.
'I have a skipper that runs that boat, and I'm not making any money on it,' he says.
'I can promise you, the rules and regulations put upon our small commercial fleet since Brexit are worse than they were when we were a member of the European Union.'
Will the BBC welcome Boris Becker back to its Wimbledon coverage this year to mark the 40th anniversary of his first victory?
He's been off Auntie's airwaves since a bankruptcy scandal led to his imprisonment. He wants to return – but the BBC won't say if it's game on.
Nigel Farage was quick to overrule hapless Reform chairman Zia Yusuf after he insisted only the Union Flag and the flag of St George would be allowed to fly above Reform town halls in England.
Farage now says county banners can also be flown. Sensible.
Proud Lancastrian Sir Lindsay Hoyle, the Speaker of the Commons, was enraged by Yusuf's diktat. He expects to see the red rose flying above every official building in his native county.
As any MP knows, it's best to keep on the right side of the Speaker.
The fateful meeting in the summer of 2019 when Morgan McSweeney agreed to run Sir Keir Starmer's Labour leadership campaign was brokered by Steve Reed, a relatively unknown MP.
Reed and McSweeney, now No 10 chief of staff, used to work together at Lambeth Council. 'Loyalty and gratitude are the hallmarks of politicians,' says Reed, now the Environment Secretary.
'That's the only way I can account for being rewarded with the department for sewage and angry farmers.'
Baroness Anderson has had her revenge.
Formerly Ruth Smeeth, she had a rough time as a Jewish Labour MP during the Jeremy Corbyn years.
Now a Lords whip, she adapted an old remark on Wednesday to say: 'The Labour party is a broad synagogue.'
That's called getting even.
Impressionist Rory Bremner recalls playing tennis with Tony Blair on holiday in France before he won the 1997 General Election.
'Blair said he loved what I did with John Major and I said: 'When you become prime minister next year the boot will be on the other foot – I'll be doing you'.'
