Thursday, February 09, 2006

Andrew Mitchell Scuppers Boris Shadow Cabinet Place


Lawks alive! The Express Diary reports today that my old colleague Andrew Mitchell unwittingly scuppered Boris Johnson entering the Shadow Cabinet. Apparently David Cameron wanted to promote Mitchell to become Work & Pensions Secretary but he insisted on staying with the International Development brief, which he had become rather attached to. DC had wanted Boris to travel the world bringing joy to the third world, but apparently drew the line at entrusting him with pensions reforms. Wise man. I'm not sure what Philip Hammond (the current Work & Pensions spokesman) will make of this, or indeed Boris, who now spends his time schmoozing with university students. But Andrew Mitchell has a lot to answer for!

5 comments:

Hughes Views said...

I'm sure Boris will be very happy with the university students and vice versa. Even those who should know better seem to be awfully fond of him; one of my offspring even joined his fan club at Durham. There was a move to make him Chancellor of that fine seat of learning to replace Peter Ustinov but fortunately good sense prevailed and they chose Bill Bryson, an American with generally much sounder views on most topics.

Btw your site still disappears if my cursor wanders across it and your sidebar often vanishes to the bottom of the page (as did mine until I republished the whole thing).

Btw (2) I saw you on the tele last night but they didn't give you much time to talk. You did well especially wrt Ming but you don't look like you do on the wireless.

Iain Dale said...

Barbara, I'm sorry if I rejected your post. I can assure you it was an error, as I very rarely censor anything.

I really don't know why the site disappears if you wander your cursor over the comments box. I can't get it to do it. I wonder if it is in a particualr type of broswer. Anyone who has this problem, perhaps they can tell what browser they use.

Hughes Views, I'm not sure what I look like on radio!

Mike Wood said...

IE 6.00.2800
Windows XP

Anonymous said...

Your site works fine on my work pc through Internet Explorer and 17" monitor, but doesn't fit properly (side menu goes to bottom of page), and is prone to disappearing, when I view it at home through AOL's browser and on a 15" screen.

BondWoman said...

Unlike Durham, it would appear that the campaign to install Boris as Rector of Edinburgh University is now unstoppable. My offspring will certainly be voting for him...Where did I go wrong? Luckily I have a vote myself as well, so we can cancel each other out, but in general students are hugely more numerous than staff and they seem to be favouring Boris, and the rest of the votes are likely to split between a range of other candidates.