Sunak’s Number 10 is much better at keeping secrets than others

Published

4 months ago

May 27, 2024

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Suddenly, at election time, political predictions become so much harder and riskier. Everything changes in a campaign, not least the news cycle.

That’s my excuse, at any rate, for failing to foresee the announcement of a general election in last week’s Politics at Jack and Sam’s.

There were a few clues – and one magisterial tweet from Financial Times journalist Lucy Fisher – but we were deaf to the signals.

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In this week’s Politics at Jack and Sam’s podcast, we reflect how this Number 10 – in big contrast to the last two – is much better at keeping secrets.

But the moment an election is called, the way information gets out alters and everything becomes trickier.

General election latest: Tories attack Starmer’s ‘stamina’

Normally political news emerges in so many different ways. There’s parliament. Government announcements. Questions, written and oral. MPs themselves, including ministers, wandering the corridors of the Commons where journalists can go stopping for a gossip.

All of that disappears at election time. Keeping things secret from the other side matters a lot more, while decisions and information is held by a much tighter group of people.

That’s why it’s not really feasible to do a weekly look ahead political podcast – and we’re responding by going daily. More details to follow.

Rishi Sunak‘s allies are quite upfront that the timing of the general election was a finely balanced argument and you can make a case both ways.

One of the big things that motivated Sunak to go now was that he was doing – in his view – big things; welfare announcements, defence spending commitments, NHS workforce plan.

But they found people weren’t listening and the polls weren’t moving. They weren’t “getting a hearing”. Which they put down to people being switched off from politics and apathy being high – and so the decision to call an election was motivated by that.

The other big consideration was that from around March-early April they were getting internal economic indicators, suggesting the economic conditions – things like inflation, interest rates – might be favourable, sufficiently such that they could base a campaign around.

Fascinatingly, they say there wasn’t a “decision” meeting two months ago or even three weeks ago – the move was more like the tide coming in slowly.

Although Labour were caught on the hop – some staff had booked leave, were privately confident there was nothing coming this summer and the Labour campaign bus is not yet ready – candidates claim to be pretty happy with what’s happened so far.

However, the biggest challenge of the next five weeks will be seeing whether they can respond to the pressure of a campaign, and the relentless desire for more of everything.

Currently the narrative is that Sunak had a miserable start – in a few weeks, pictures of the PM in the rain could be a plucky fighter battling against the odds.

This feels unlikely right now but having been through the 2017 campaign, we know anything can happen.

Politics

Lisa Nandy says Sir Keir Starmer ‘very sensible’ to accept football tickets worth thousands

Published

13 hours ago

September 21, 2024

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Lisa Nandy says Sir Keir Starmer 'very sensible' to accept football tickets worth thousands

Lisa Nandy has said Sir Keir Starmer’s decision to accept thousands of pounds worth of football tickets was “very sensible”.

The minister for culture, media and sport also said she had never accepted free clothes from a donor.

Speaking to Sky News at the start of the Labour Party conference today, the MP for Wigan said: “The problem that has arisen since [Sir Keir] became leader of the opposition and then prime minister is that for him to sit in the stands would require a huge security detail, would be disruptive for other people and it would cost the taxpayer a lot of money.

“So I think he’s taken a very sensible decision that’s not the right and appropriate thing to do, and it’s right to accept that he has to go and sit in a different area.

“But I know that he’d much rather be sitting in the stands cheering people on with the usual crowd that he’s been going to the football with for years.”

Ms Nandy also said while she has not accepted free clothes – joking “I think you can probably see that I choose my own clothes sadly” – she doesn’t “make any judgements about what other members of parliament do”.

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She said: “The only judgement I would make is if they’re breaking the rules, so they’re trying to hide what they’re doing. That’s when problems arise.

“Because the point of being open and transparent is that people can see where the relationships are, and they can then judge for themselves whether there’s been any undue influence.”

She asserted there had not been an undue influence in gifts accepted by senior Labour figures, adding: “We don’t want the news and the commentary to be dominated by conversations about clothes.

“We rightly have a system, I think, where the taxpayer doesn’t fund these things. We don’t claim on expenses for them. And so MPs will always take donations, will always take gifts in kind.

“MPs of all political parties have historically done that and that is the system that we have.”

She added: “I don’t think there’s any suggestion here that Keir Starmer has broken any rules. I don’t think there’s any suggestion that he’s done anything wrong.

“We expect our politicians to be well turned out, we expect them to be people who go out and represent us at different events and represent the country at different events and are clothed appropriately.

“But the point is that when we accept donations for that or for anything else, that we declare them and we’re open and transparent about them.”

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Sir Keir, Angela Rayner and Rachel Reeves said yesterday they will no longer accept donations in the future to pay for clothes.

The announcement followed criticism of Sir Keir’s gifts from donors, which included clothing worth £16,200 and multiple pairs of glasses worth £2,485, according to the MPs’ register of interests.

The register shows Ms Rayner has accepted clothing donations to the value of £2,230.

Sky News also revealed the scale of Sir Keir’s donations this week as part of our Westminster Accounts investigation.

Sir Keir was found to have received substantially more gifts and freebies than any other MP – his total in gifts, benefits, and hospitality topped £100,000 since December 2019.