Mandrake

TIM WALKER on the fallout from the the Duchess of Sussex’s legal victory over the Mail on Sunday. The Duchess of Sussex‘s legal victory over the Mail on Sunday and what she called its “illegal and dehumanising practices” represented a defeat, too, for the newspaper group’s editor-in-chief Paul Dacre against Geordie Greig, his successor as editor of the Daily Mail. Mandrake […]

TIM WALKER on the list of the chancellor’s engagements, and the mystery of the missing BBC Boris Johnson documentary. When it comes to ingratiating himself with the media, Boris Johnson will be alarmed to learn that his ambitious chancellor Rishi Sunak, pictured, is beating him at his own game. In the third quarter of 2020, Sunak ate out to help […]

TIM WALKER on the PM’s controversial trip north of the border and a perhaps surprising cultural appointment. The position of Luke Graham as Boris Johnson‘s special adviser on the Union is hanging in the balance. It was Graham who encouraged the prime minister to make his much-lampooned 900-mile round trip to Scotland last week when he was photographed dripping some […]

TIM WALKER on the latest in-house spending at the Treasury. Plus, how Steinway pianos have suffered from Brexit. With a £500 million-plus personal fortune and a father-in-law who’s a billionaire, Rishi Sunak inevitably seems to struggle sometimes to empathise with lesser mortals. Already in these straitened times, the chancellor has allowed annual running costs for his flat in […]

TIM WALKER on the former chancellor’s latest venture and the current fad for politicians to use Union Jacks as interview backdrops. George Osborne is nothing if not a pragmatist. A passionate Remainer during the referendum campaign, he later became, as a newspaper editor, an unashamed champion of Boris Johnson. Now, the former chancellor clearly sees a business opportunity […]

TIM WALKER reports on the latest on a scheme to modernise Downing Street, the long wait for Paul Dacre’s TV show, and those mystery Michael Gove press briefings… Having  blown tens of thousands of pounds on new offices for his former henchman Dominic Cummings, Boris Johnson is now focusing on making Downing Street a sufficiently opulent place for […]

TIM WALKER on a notable name missing from the New Year Honours list. Although his fanatical support for Brexit helped tip the referendum in 2016, Paul Dacre, the former editor of the Daily Mail, was once again overlooked in last week’s honours list. “It’s mystifying as even his worst enemies would concede he was an infinitely superior editor in […]

TIM WALKER on frustrations in the House of Lords, Boris Johnson’s messy office and the latest Gina Miller pile-on. As the nation learns of Boris Johnson‘s New Year’s honours list, spare a thought for Norman Fowler – the Lord Speaker – who not so long ago set up the Burns committee to reduce the number of members of the […]

TIM WALKER on the furore over the Mail on Sunday’s Brexit story, and a difference of opinion between Michael Gove and Sarah Vine over the scandal involving the Sky News broadcaster. The Mail on Sunday‘s incendiary headline that stated “Merkel wants Britain ‘to crawl across broken glass'” resulted in widespread condemnation as the EU-UK Brexit talks […]

TIM WALKER on Carrie Symonds’ public relations guru and the latest on Evgeny Lebedev’s peerage. With the so-called Court of Carrie now apparently in the ascendency – it was reported over the weekend that a friend of Boris Johnson‘s girlfriend been appointed to a well-paid government job that hadn’t even been advertised – her image clearly needs a bit of […]

TIM WALKER on the latest manoeuvrings for the job of BBC chair. Plus, the return of Michael Gove’s mystery leaker. Mandrake hears that the BBC plans to announce its new chair before Christmas and it looks as if Richard Sharp – a Tory donor who was once Rishi Sunak‘s boss at Goldman Sachs – is a shoo-in. More […]

TIM WALKER on the MP sent out to defend the home secretary, plus… Johnson’s latest outside earnings and Rupert Murdoch’s cabinet favourites. ‘Time for a pointless sacrifice, Tony’ Boris Johnson may have expressed his “full confidence” in Priti Patel after she was found to have broken the ministerial code in relation to workplace bullying, but he was not of […]

TIM WALKER’s weekly diary reports on a revamp for Rishi Sunak’s Downing Street pad, and Jennifer Arcuri’s views on the Dominic Cummings affair. With a billionaire father-in-law in N. R. Narayana Murthy, the co-founder of the information technology conglomerate Infosys, Rishi Sunak is clearly not a man used to slumming it. Still, the money that appears to have […]

Tim Walker on his Trump-inspired tiff with the BBC’s man in Washington. Tempers among BBC journalists were clearly frayed as their rolling coverage of the American election was unfavourably compared to CNN, which robustly called out Donald Trump‘s lies. “What the f*** are you talking about, Tim?” the BBC’s North America editor Jon Sopel, pictured, responded when I suggested […]

There was no shortage of critics for Rishi Sunak’s ‘Eat Out to Help Out’ scheme when it became clear it may have contributed to the spread of the coronavirus. Still, the chancellor’s wife Akshata had good reason to applaud what he was trying to do. Mandrake can disclose that she was among the founder shareholders […]

Tim Walker on the fractured relationship between the Conservative party and the papers. In another momentous week, the story of how a group of researchers from Cambridge University had found that cold-water bathing may protect the brain from dementia slipped the minds of most of the national editors soon enough. Not, however, on the Daily […]

Coventry’s Belgrade Theatre was the biggest winner in the government’s cultural bail-out scheme in England, with a whopping £999,999 coming its way. This made it the envy of far more acclaimed, but less generously supported venues, such as the Bristol Old Vic, and, in London, the Almeida and the Kiln, where the great Indhu Rubasingham, […]

Normally perfectly attuned to what right-wing newspaper press barons want, Boris Johnson made an uncharacteristic blunder when he announced he wanted to see offshore wind farms generating enough electricity to power every home in the UK within a decade. “He had no idea the Daily Mail owner Lord Rothermere, a substantial landowner, considers wind farms […]

It’s becoming difficult to throw a stone these days without hitting someone setting up a right wing broadcasting outfit. Mandrake can disclose that Sarah Sands – having lately relinquished the editorship of the Today programme – is following in the footsteps of former Corporation colleagues Andrew Neil and Sir Robbie Gibb and has established an […]

Whatever else might be said about Sasha Swire’s memoirs, they hardly instil confidence in the political classes. This may well be why Rupert Murdoch was willing to splash out no less than £250,000 to serialise them in the Times and Sunday Times. “It’s a jaw-dropping amount of money for a book in these straitened times, […]

Boris Johnson made a rare foray into the Commons tea rooms last week to calm backbenchers’ nerves about the party of law and order breaking the law. It left at least one suspecting the PM might not see out his full term of office. “What was interesting was that to him it was all about […]

Seemingly unsackable and above the law, Dominic Cummings can legitimately lay claim to being the most powerful man in the land. Boris Johnson’s omnipotent adviser has still, however, to be the subject of a single biography. Mandrake hears that one journalist, who has lately stepped down from a national newspaper, has shown publishers what I am told is […]

TIM WALKER on Radio 4’s censoring of Boris Johnson’s critics, Dominic Cummings’ Whitehall redecoration plans and the possibility that David Cameron might leave Twitter for good. Boris Johnson’s old friend and former Daily Telegraph colleague Sarah Sands passed on the editorship of Today to Owenna Griffiths at the end of last week. Sadly, even in […]

A photographer who got a picture of the PM in the grounds of Chequers ‘spooked’ him – he could have been a sniper. With stark warnings of civil unrest following a no-deal Brexit, Boris Johnson has ordered that the ring of steel around Chequers, his beloved country retreat in the Buckinghamshire countryside, be reinforced still […]

TIM WALKER says the former cabinet secretary’s book is set to rattle the prime minister. Sir Jeremy Heywood, the highly-regarded cabinet secretary who died in 2018 shortly after stepping down from the role, is to deliver his verdict on Boris Johnson’s government posthumously. His widow Suzanne has put the finishing touches to a manuscript he […]

TIM WALKER talks of growing fond of Sir Nicholas Soames, Boris Johnson’s dishonours list and reading up on the coronavirus crisis Boris Johnson’s dishonours list – Evgeny Lebedev, Jo Johnson and Ian Botham etc nominated for peerages – was greeted with dismay in the Upper House. Some decent, right-minded members considered relinquishing their titles in […]

TIM WALKER on how trust in the British mainstream media is now in short supply. Dr Julian Lewis’s lethal question in the Commons last week to the security minister James Brokenshire – drawing attention to my scoop that Dominic Cummings had attempted to replace the secretariat of the independent Intelligence and Security Committee with political […]

TIM WALKER on the Chris Grayling’s future, a rebellion in Nigel Lawson’s family and the former chancellor’s new Saudi gig. With a father in Lord Lawson who was chairman of Vote Leave and a brother in Dominic who is one of Brexit’s most outspoken proponents in journalism, it takes some spirit for Nigella Lawson to […]