The Londoner: Liz Truss makes politics a Spectator sport

Liz Truss roasts colleagues at Spectator Awards / Steve Baker in the firing-line / Soviet flag removed at Cambridge college / Corbyn's soft spot for This Morning
Say cheese: Liz Truss
Getty Images
29 November 2018

The Chief Secretary to the Treasury Liz Truss delighted as guest of honour at The Spectator Parliamentarian of the Year awards last night, leaving few colleagues spared in a quip-littered speech. She opened by asking the magazine’s editor if he’d had to ask as many people to perform this role “as the Prime Minister did to recruit the new Brexit Secretary”. “I hear Ruth Davidson was unavailable,” she continued, referencing last year’s speaker, “as she has a lovely new baby son. I do hope that he will grow up to see the day when we are out of the backstop.” She claimed to have cast around for gags for her speech. “The DUP sent me a joke but ... charged £1 billion. Jacob Rees-Mogg promised five but only sent three through. I asked the Chancellor for a joke... Just kidding.”

She said she was proud to have worked with Michael Gove in Education and hoped future generations would not face the ignorance of those born in the Sixties and Seventies. “There are some unfortunate students who don’t know the difference between Japan and China,” she deadpanned. “Others that don’t know that Unionists and nationalists in Northern Ireland vote for different parties. And there are some people that don’t know that Britain is an island.” Having deftly dispensed with the gaffes of Jeremy Hunt, Karen Bradley and Dominic Raab, she mocked “pizza- plotting parties” of Andrea Leadsom. “I have to admit I don’t like pizza,” she said. “I love it.” Truss wasn’t the only parliamentarian on fire. Tracey Crouch, the former sports minister who resigned last month over fixed odds betting terminals, took the anarchic theme one step further. Accepting her award of Resignation of the Year –“I am really touched, particularly as there has been so much competition” — she said she was glad that the Chancellor wasn’t present. Then — voicing a tribute to the late Baroness Trumpington — she flicked two fingers in the air.

But the Tories weren’t alone mocking their leaders. Labour’s Margaret Hodge accepted Speech of the Year saying. “I never ever thought that my Jewish identity would become central to my politics. Indeed I remember my dad tried to make me Jewish and failed. The local rabbi tried… my Jewish friends tried … and failed. And it took the leadership of Jeremy Corbyn…” To applause she added: “But of course I’m Jewish so I haven’t got a sense of irony.”

Shadow chancellor John McDonnell couldn’t accept Politician of the Year in person, perhaps having said he couldn’t befriend Tories. Fraser Nelson, The Spectator’s editor, joked: “He said if he wanted to be sipping champagne with toffee-nosed, floppy-haired public-school boys, he’d be off running Momentum.”

Sawn-off reasoning

Large-bore: Steve Baker (Photo by Jack Taylor/Getty Images)
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Steve Baker, the former DExEU minister and ardent Brexiteer, is a fan of large-bore weapons. “It is about 20 years since I fired a .50 calibre,” he said yesterday in Parliament, trying to prevent such weapons being outlawed.

“My Hon. Friend is entirely right to talk about how large and inappropriate they are for crimes.” John Woodcock, the ex-Labour, now independent MP, coolly replied: “Nuclear weapons have never been used for a crime, nor are they used in sport, yet they are not allowed to be held by civilians. I am trying to follow the Hon. Gentleman’s logic, but I am afraid that I am struggling.”

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The revolution will not be glorified. Students at King’s College, Cambridge, whose alumni include Salman Rushdie, Zadie Smith and Alan Turing, have voted overwhelmingly to remove a Soviet Flag that has hung in the college bar since 2004. Eighty six per cent of undergraduate voters elected to remove the Soviet flag, as opposed to 11 per cent, who voted to keep it.

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Kwasi Kwarteng MP, recently appointed Under-Secretary of State at DExEU, is one of the 10 most looked up politicians on the online version of Who’s Who. Says a publishing source: “No, we cannot tell if this is because he is looking up himself.”

Suits you — and me, says Alexa in a match made for everyone

San Lorenzo: Valentine Fillol-Cordier, Alexa Chung and Serafina Sama (Photo by David M. Benett/Dave Benett/Getty Images )
Dave Benett/Getty Images

We know the feeling: turn up at a party in your gladdest rags, and someone else is wearing the same. Fortunately for Alexa Chung and co, the match was deliberate — in honour of the launch of the Isa Arfen spring/summer 2019 collection last night at San Lorenzo in Knightsbridge. Not that Chung minds a bit of accidental twinning when it comes to her wardrobe. “I don’t dwell on something that’s the same,” the presenter told Elle recently. “I love that suit, you love that suit, we wear it totally differently because we’re vastly different people — and that’s what’s cool.” Indeed!

SW1A

Jeremy Corbyn took to the soft sofa of This Morning today for a sit-down with Phillip Schofield. Corbyn was “unavailable” to appear on BBC’s Today at Labour conference and hasn’t appeared on Channel 4 News since September. But a love of gentle interviews is the one thing he shares with Theresa May. After her famous One Show interview, in which she revealed that her husband Philip takes out the bins, the absence of probing was so stark that, says a source, “even her staff were shocked”.

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Lisa Nandy, Labour MP for Wigan, says the 585-page Withdrawal Agreement has a hidden drawback. “I’ve not only had to read it,” she told the podcast Polling Politics, “but I’ve been carting it up and down the country, which is not doing much for my back.”

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Just how many friends does Tom Tugendhat MP have? “Signing Christmas cards,” he tweeted last night, “500 done, a few hundred more to go.”

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Suit up: Fenn O'Meally and Poppy Ajudha (Photo by David M. Benett/Dave Benett/Getty Images for Paul Smith)
Dave Benett/Getty Images for Pau

Cara Delevingne turned heads in a tuxedo at Princess Eugenie’s wedding. Now designer Paul Smith has boarded the trend: last night he launched his new women’s tux collection at the Italian Embassy. Film-maker Fenn O’Meally and singer Poppy Ajudha followed suit.

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