The Londoner: Momentum chief backs Keir and Jess

Laura Parker backs Keir Starmer and Jess Phillips to head Labour Remain campaign / Dawn Butler caught in a pinch / Jeremy Corbyn's festival fever / When Nelson Mandela met Margaret Thatcher... 
Momentum chief: Laura Parker
Getty Images
18 October 2019

While Labour tears itself apart over anti-Semitism, The Londoner found a pocket of peace in the House of Commons yesterday at a “Labour for a Public Vote” meeting where Momentum chief Laura Parker endorsed Keir Starmer and Jess Phillips to spearhead any potential second referendum Labour campaign for Remain.

Parker, Momentum’s national co-ordinator (who is vying to be selected as Labour’s parliamentary candidate in Enfield North), talked tough, calling for a radically different campaign to 2016 and backed Guardian columnist Polly Toynbee’s suggestion that Starmer and Phillips would be strong campaigners. But she added: “I’ll obviously be excommunicated from Momentum for suggesting that, but that’s an example of the hatchets we’re going to have to bury.” Starmer serves as shadow Brexit secretary but Phillips is known for being an outspoken critic of Jeremy Corbyn.

But it wasn’t all a love-in. In a jibe aimed at Alastair Campbell, Parker said: “The great and the good must be behind the scenes and ideally locked in a cupboard.” And on Tony Blair having a role, she retorted: “We’ve got to present people with something that doesn’t feel like rehashed old soup.”

She also criticised the last campaign for being too male-dominated: “The men screwed it up last time, so we’re going to have the best of things this time. There were no women in the last campaign. I don’t want to fall into lazy sterotypes, but in the end you need a mature group of women sitting in a room with a cup of tea.”

Parker later told The Londoner: “We need more women, less London. That’s not what the Evening Standard wants to hear.” Fair enough. We’re happy as long as the lead campaigner doesn’t take a mini-break during any future campaign. Toynbee had strong words on how the demographics had changed since 2016: “The Grim Reaper has done us many favours. Two million have died, 2.5 million teens have come of age.” She also suggested stealing “take back control” as a campaign slogan. Dominic Cummings may claim copyright infringement...

Long talk to freedom

When Margaret Thatcher first met Nelson Mandela, people were worried he might not get a word in edgeways.

“They met at No 10 and Mrs Thatcher was told that she must let him speak because she was always interrupting people,” Charles Moore told an audience at an event at Hatchards Piccadilly to promote his new biography of the former prime minister.

“And I think he made the world record because he spoke for 50 minutes, before she said anything. They talked for such a long time that the press outside started to shout, “Free Nelson Mandela!”

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The Londoner bumped into Andrew Roberts at yesterday’s Catholic Herald Book Awards, where he recalled with a smile that during the Nineties “I was called pinguid by The Londoner”. He thought it meant “like a penguin” but looked it up only to discover it means “of the nature of or resembling fat; oily or greasy”. Roberts said then editor Sarah Sands teased: “We thought you’d never look it up.”

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Mark Francois MP’s memoir had been titled You Couldn’t Make it Up but at the launch of journalist Asa Bennett’s book Romanifesto, Francois said that this was already the title of a Richard Littlejohn book. Perhaps it should now be called You Really Couldn’t Make it Up.

Birthday girl Fergie on garden duty

(L to R) Jenny Halpern Prince, Sally Wood, Sarah Ferguson, Duchess of York, Katherine Jenkins, Dame Joan Collins and Tamara Beckwith
Dave Benett/Getty Images

Royals, actors, singers and socialites flocked to Claridge’s last night for the Lady Garden Gala. Among the glamorous types in Mayfair were the Duchess of York, Sarah Ferguson, Samantha Cameron, actor Dame Joan Collins and opera singer Katherine Jenkins. As it was Ferguson’s birthday this week, a pair of double-decker cakes (replete with sparklers) were presented to her. The gala raises money for the Lady Garden Foundation.

Across town, the PinkNews awards drew its own bevy of stars — singers,

TV presenters and even politicos. Singer-songwriter Gareth Gates caught The Londoner’s eye as he rocked up in a chequered grey suit with a waistcoat to match — and no less than three buttons undone. And what about that tan? Also there was TV star Dr Ranj Singh and Brexit activist Gina Miller. Even incorrigible campaigners have to let their hair down sometimes.

SW1A

Jeremy Corbyn says “the best moment of my Labour life” was “being invited to speak at Glastonbury” in 2017. That was where the “Oh, Jeremy Corbyn” chants broke out. Corbyn told The Londoner “weirdly Michael Eavis and I were both at the Shepton Mallet folk festival in 1970, he got involved in organising Glastonbury where my dad used to take me as a kid... we both came together all those years later”.

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Dawn Butler (above) has a confession. “I pinched an MP’s bum and pretended it wasn’t me, which was quite funny,” she tells The Londoner. But the joke wasn’t funny for everyone. The shadow women and equalities secretary continued: “They took it quite seriously and I had to really apologise. It was funny but it wasn’t funny.”

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Andrew Adonis is chipper after failing to make Labour’s long list for candidates in Vauxhall, telling The Londoner: “I haven’t given up trying to escape from the House of Lords!”

Top Gear brain in neutral over Booker

Jeremy Clarkson admits he hasn’t “got a clue” about the right choice in the Booker dilemma after judges jointly awarded this year’s prize. At last night’s launch of Fatima Bhutto’s book New Kings of the World: Dispatches from Bollywood, Dizi and K-Pop, held at Nolita Social, he told The Londoner: “I think you’ve just uncovered the one thing ever that I have no opinion on.” But it didn’t last long. “I’d just give it to both of them,” the former Top Gear presenter then said. “Why not? Let’s be honest, they’ll each sell 12 books then. Rather than one selling 16 and one selling only eight, which is the point. I’m more looking forward to reading Robert Harris’s book.”

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