By ANDREW PIERCE FOR THE DAILY MAILPUBLISHED: 23:49, 1 September 2024 | UPDATED: 00:30, 2 September 2024
Now it's the turn of special advisers to be antagonised by Keir Starmer's embattled gatekeeper Sue Gray.
Outraged by the inferior pay and conditions imposed on them by the Prime Minister's chief of staff – packages are often 'significantly' less than what they were earning when they worked for Labour before the election and lower than their counterparts enjoyed in the last Tory government – dozens at No 10 and across Whitehall are going to join a trade union.
Meanwhile, the Civil Service Commissioner has announced an investigation into a raft of appointments to key government roles in the wake of the cronyism row engulfing Labour.
And who will be at the centre of such an inquiry? Former senior civil servant Sue Gray.
She's also locked in a power struggle with Starmer's head of strategy, Morgan McSweeney.
A source says: 'Sue seems to want to alienate everyone.' Or, as the Left-wing New Statesman reports: 'It's not Sue vs Morgan. It's Sue versus everyone.'
More questions for Starmer over why Labour donor Lord Alli was given a pass to No 10. Former DUP leader Baroness Foster was a Downing Street regular. Was she granted a pass? 'All during the time I was keeping Theresa May in No 10 I was not offered a pass,' she says
Moggy's milking the Maggie gag
She was dubbed 'Thatcher the milk snatcher' after axing free milk for primary school pupils.
Following the news that Margaret Thatcher's portrait had been removed from her former study at No 10, the fan account of Larry the Downing Street cat tweeted: 'The painting has been moved to the kitchen which is a problem as my milk keeps disappearing.'
It's not hard to imagine what Lord Kinnock will make of Starmer's authoritarian plan to ban smoking in pub gardens. Once a 20-a-day man, Kinnock used to brief hacks in smoke-filled rooms at the Commons until he was told to quit by late wife Glenys.
That didn't stop him cadging fags from anyone handy – always with the word of warning: 'Don't tell Glenys.'
Clacton FC has made Nigel Farage its new patron. The Reform MP is delighted to accept the honour. Does it mean the club's attack will now always come from the Right wing?
As housing minister in the last government, you might have expected Lee Rowley, ejected at the election, to surface in the boardroom of a major building firm.
Not a bit of it. Rowley is now a project manager at start-up company Recotech, where duties include 'treating and modifying poultry litter, digestate, dairy slurry and pig slurry, to produce fertiliser'. Where there's muck there's brass.
At the press conference following his turgid Rose Garden speech last week, Keir Starmer was unusually coy about the return of Oasis.
For good reason. Guitarist Noel Gallagher is no fan of Starmer's party, saying in 2021: 'I f***ing hate the Labour Party. They've betrayed the working classes . . . they hate them, it's as simple as that.'
Corbynistas splash cash
Former Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn raised a staggering £123,000 from local donations when he stood in his Islington North constituency as an independent.
More than 3,500 people dug deep, with the total dwarfing the £16,825 cap on candidates' spending imposed by the Electoral Commission.
Corbyn, who won the seat with a 7,000 majority, is going to donate the surplus to worthy local causes.
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