The arrival at No 10 of Tory MP Jo Johnson – brother of London mayor Boris – is good news for the European Commission. Jo works for Business For New Europe, a pro-EU outfit.
He also worked for the Financial Times – once the europhiles’ favourite paper. Before Eton, he attended a school for the children of eurocrats.
Father Stanley worked for the European Commission and draws an EU pension. My source says: ‘Boris is pragmatic and willing to embrace the eurosceptic cause. But Jo’s allegiances to the EU are more solid.’
Jo Johnson worked for the Financial Times - once the europhiles' favourite paper and attended a school for the children of eurocrats
Amusingly, actress Demi Moore, 50, is voted ‘celebrity who is ageing most gracefully’ in a poll. This despite a spell in rehab after being dumped by her toyboy second husband, actor Ashton Kutcher, and a dramatic weight loss. Best to ignore such polls.
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Heiress Jemima Khan, informs her followers on Twitter: ‘Peter Mandelson is one of the most odious, self-satisfied, misogynistic men I have ever met. Compellingly, fascinatingly horrible.’ Sounds like a lovers’ tiff (see the adverb ‘compellingly’).
I hope Lord Mandelson’s samba-dancing partner, Reinaldo da Silva, puts pouting Ms Khan back in her box.
Labour’s Ed Miliband arrived with his soapbox – or pallet, to be strictly accurate – to address locals in David Cameron’s Oxfordshire constituency of Witney. ‘Bring on Boris!’ cried hecklers. How tragic if they thought he was Dave.
Apropos Cameron, he and Chancellor George Osborne attended the launch party for Charles Moore’s official biography of Margaret Thatcher, then the 1922 Committee’s 90th anniversary dinner at the Blue Boar, Westminster. Didn’t they have more important duties?
Lib Dem MP Bob Russell tables a Commons motion lamenting that ‘Britain’s moth population has declined, with over 60 species becoming extinct since 1900.’ I am advised that one of the causes has been EU subsidies for ripping out hedgerows. All supported, presumably, by europhile Russell, friend of the moth. Flutter off, Bob.
Having made a fuss in the Commons about Home Secretary Theresa May making a joke about his name, Tory MP Mark Reckless seeks to make light of the matter, saying: ‘My father went to medical school with a Dr Butcher, a Dr Carver, a Dr Coffin and a Dr De’Ath’ He should have said this at the time rather than whingeing to the Speaker.
So what view will Charles Moore take, in his second volume of Baroness Thatcher’s biography, on the 1986 Sunday Times report that the Queen hated her ‘abrasive’ policies? Moore says: ‘I haven’t made my mind up.’ Moore’s not a friend of the paper’s then editor, Andrew Neil. Snooty Old Etonian Moore mocked the Scotsman’s much admired, 2011 BBC2 film about grammar schools, patronisingly calling it ‘both boastful and poignant’.