Ephraim Hardcastle
FALLING on her sword will have financial comforts for Liz Truss. She will become the seventh living ex-PM to enjoy a payoff of £115,000 annually to fund her ‘public life’. She will also retain a chauffeurdriven car and get round-the-clock protection for life, the costs of which are never discussed. With a new round of spending cuts in the offing no one seems to have looked at the costs of the growing list of has-beens, many of whom will be a long-term drain on the public purse. David Cameron is only 56, Boris Johnson is 58 and Liz Truss is just 47.
KING Charles might favour Penny Mordaunt in Number 10. Named after a frigate, she is a member of the Royal Naval Reserve and has met Charles before – they apparently got on very well. Her dad was in the Parachute Regiment of which Charles remains Colonel-in-Chief. And she was once a magician’s assistant. Charles is a member of the Magic Circle.
SHOULD Theresa May, whispered by some delusional Tories as a Truss replacement, re-enter Downing Street she might pay more attention to her restoration outfit. Designer Amanda Wakeley was appalled that May planned to wear a navy suit by a German designer last time. ‘I said, “Woah, our second female prime minister in history cannot take office wearing a German designer”,’ wailed Wakeley. ‘I don’t care who she wears, she’s got to wear British’. She lent her one of her outfits. At least it didn’t include Amanda’s Hairy-Bikerslookalike £995 leather trousers!
SHARP-elbowed flavour of the month
Amol Rajan, pictured, reporting on the BBC’s 100th birthday on Tuesday’s Six O’Clock News, showing footage of Jimmy Savile, said the Beeb had ‘been responsible for some appalling scandals’. Four hours later on the Ten O’Clock bulletin Amol apparently had an inspired rethink, stating merely that the BBC had ‘been through some appalling scandals’. Who prompted the change?
COMMONS Speaker Sir Lindsay Hoyle jokes in a Channel 5 documentary tonight that he’d prefer Westminster Abbey’s medieval Chapter House to the House of Commons. ‘The acoustics are better for “order, order”,’ he says, before belting out his famous catchphrase, adding: ‘What better sound! I think I need to move the chamber back here, I have more authority in this room than any other!’
BIOGRAPHER Gareth Russell confirms that the Protestant Queen Mother had no bias against Roman Catholics as he recounts details of her Clarence House lunch with the late RC Archbishop of Westminster Cormac Murphy-O’Connor. ‘All afternoon we played the piano and we sang the old music hall songs,’ she said. When her equerry came to retrieve her, he found the pair belting out Lonnie Donegan’s My Old Man’s a Dustman. ‘I think [my Dubonnet] must have been spiked,’ she said, unconvincingly.