Ephraim Hardcastle
NICKY Morgan’s peerage to remain in the Cabinet still leaves Boris with the problem of who to elevate in his Dissolution Honours List. In 2015 David Cameron sent 26 Tories to the Lords, including lingerie designer Michelle Mone, accepting 11 peerage nominations from the Lib Dems and eight from Labour. How many will Johnson allow Corbyn to nominate? He did take over as Labour leader in 2015 pledging not to make any appointments to the Lords, before nominating Shami Chakrabarti. Since then, he’s rubberstamped five more.
WILL Jo Swinson be made a dame, reflecting the knighthoods awarded to preceding Lib Dem leaders Nick Clegg and Vince Cable? Unpopular with Boris, she was the only political leader not to be a Privy Counsellor. Defeated DUP MP Nigel Dodds might have expected ermine if Boris had a slim majority, but he doesn’t need him now.
WIGAN-BORN Kay Burley publicly backs local Labour MP Lisa Nandy for the party leadership, tweeting: ‘A nononsense northern woman is exactly what Labour needs at the helm. You go girl.’ Asked whether she should be remaining impartial as a broadcaster, Kay defiantly adds: ‘She’s a woman; she takes no nonsense and she’s a fellow Wiganer, so no.’ Would Sky’s Queen Bee get away with such bias at the BBC?
SOPHIE Raworth, pictured, has a doctorate and speaks French and German, yet she was banished to a miserable Noel Edmonds-like role on election night, gambolling over the BBC’s outdoor jigsaw constituency map for the second election in succession. Rain rendered the map slippy with most of the potential vox pop audience vanishing in the downpour. Sophie confided to one stoic spectator that she wouldn’t be doing it again – but in fruitier language than she uses reading the Six O’Clock News.
BORIS might equal a 250-year-old record if he becomes only the second PM (after the Duke of Grafton in 1769) to divorce and remarry while in office. The Queen sometimes turns out for her prime ministers’ funerals but attending a wedding would be a novelty.
NOTING the predictable loud jeers that greeted news of the Tory majority among the Lefty live audience watching Channel 4’s election coverage, masterful BBC interrogator Andrew Neil mockingly tweets: ‘Was this when Channel 4 replaced itself with a block of ice?’
BRIAN Cox, luxuriating in rave reviews of the Rupert Murdoch-like mogul he plays in Succession, is accosted by a stranger in his local Primrose Hill coffee shop saying: ‘I just want to say, we’re liking the show. We’re liking it a lot, actually... my wife has a few little problems with it, but on the whole she’s liking it.’ The wife was Murdoch’s daughter Elisabeth and the inquirer her third husband, artist Keith Tyson, who adds: ‘Go easy on her next season, will you?’
Email: john.mcentee@dailymail.co.uk