- Morgan McSweeney, Labour's head of campaigns, gave an anti-complacency presentation to the shadow cabinet before Christmas

- his slideshow (which I've got hold of) features recent elections which defied almost all predictions when voters actually went to the ballot box - the presentation is a useful tonic for the surprisingly widespread view that Labour is cruising for an easy landslide victory

I've written an @ft column on it today here:

ft.com/content/6d51dc…

remember when Boris Johnson’s distant cousin was offering to guarantee an £800,000 loan for him?

and a few weeks later he popped up on an FCDO list of four suggested candidates to be chief executive of the British Council?

and no one could explain how that happened? we only knew any of this thanks to dogged reporting by @HarryYorke1 and @Gabriel_Pogrund at the Sunday Times

Rishi Sunak paid an effective tax rate of 22% on his almost £2m of income, the same rate (21%) as the average nurse

Tax Justice UK says: “our tax system is set up to allow the super-wealthy people to pay low levels of tax" as the @ft explains

ft.com/content/ae6746…

the UK government is planning to eliminate import tariffs on palm oil from Malaysia, a product blamed for widespread deforestation, as the price of joining an Asia-Pacific trade deal, prompting outrage from green campaigners

ft.com/content/eb8b75… Clare Oxborrow, senior sustainability analyst at Friends of the Earth, said the plans could lead to more devastating loss of forest ecosystems.

“This concession is completely at odds with the government’s commitment to curb deforestation from UK supply chains”

🚨 London and Edinburgh are heading for another constitutional clash as Rishi Sunak’s government prepares to thwart a controversial bottle recycling scheme in Scotland

ft.com/content/25d4a3… the Scotland bottle scheme may sound esoteric but it’s set to become a major constitutional flashpoint - and a key test of devolution

🚨

People briefed on Johnson’s latest list said he had for a second time put forward former Daily Mail editor Paul Dacre for a peerage, despite his rejection last year by the House of Lords appointments commission, which vets nominations

ft.com/content/77b883… fascinating dilemma for Rishi Sunak, especially if Holac reject Dacre again:

does he?

1) accept Holac advice and make enemy of one of the most powerful figures in UK media, months before election

2) capitulate and push through the appointment regardless and keep Dacre happy

if the Gray report was a politically motivated stitch-up then why did Johnson welcome it and say it “vindicated” him? - anyone who remembers the substance of the Gray report will know that she attributed blame to a lack of decent organisational structures in Number 10 rather than Johnson himself

- it was quite a waffly bureaucratic document as @iainmartin1 explained at the time

“Dominic Raab adopted an unusual approach to dealing with policy papers submitted by civil servants: grading them on a scale of one to four….he would tot them up to create a private log of his officials’ performance”

ft.com/content/036721… One official said that minor office errors — such as not sorting documents into folders arranged with tabs — could trigger a “meltdown” from Raab.

“You’re on eggshells because the smallest thing could set him off.”

- HS2 faces further cuts and delays of up to four years under secret DFT plans dubbed “Project Silverlight” and “Operation Blue Diamond”

- by me and ⁦@gillplimmer1⁩
ft.com/content/eab5c7… - the extra delays to HS2 would mean it would not be completed until as late as 2045…..TWELVE years later than originally planned

- remember the budget has already tripled from £33bn to £100bn

ZAHAWI SACKED:

- letter from Sunak says there has been a "serious breach of the ministerial code"

- as a result, I have informed you of my decision to remove you from your position in His Majesty’s Government - Zahawi has claimed that he was unaware of an HMRC probe into his tax affairs

- but ethics adviser points out that the probe began in April 2021 and "included a meeting which he and his
advisers attended with them in June 2021"

tonight the @ft can reveal that a second senior Tory MP was being investigated by HMRC last summer around the same time as Nadhim Zahawi - but the way this emerged is quite peculiar, and worth recounting in full

- on June 15 last year HMRC admitted an unnamed minister was under investigation, in response to a freedom of information request from @DanNeidle which he shared with me

no conversation about the £2bn round 2 of the levelling-up fund should ignore the cut in annual government funding to councils from £41bn to £26bn since 2010 an analogy: it’s like if I slashed your salary then let you bid for a modest bonus lottery

the Electoral Commission has warned of possible problems when the controversial voter ID system is introduced at next May’s local elections

ft.com/content/3f82a6… Cabinet Office has found that 42% of people with no photo ID are unlikely to apply for one: “This would suggest that close to half of those without photo ID would not seek to apply for the voter card,” it admitted.

UK ministers blamed for blocking possible rail strikes deal ft.com/content/f181e8… Employers had planned to offer a 10% pay rise over two years to the RMT union, but were blocked by the government, which controls the industry’s finances, according to three people familiar with the matter

key recommendations in the Gordon Brown review:

- new elected House of Lords with 200 members
- shifting 50,000 civil servants out of London
- banning most 2nd jobs for MPs
- juries of citizens to decide if MPs have breached rules
- eliminate foreign money from UK politics the report says the only exemptions for MPs' second jobs would be areas like medicine where work is needed to maintain professional membership

🚨

ministers will this week face questions from Labour about the fitness of PPE Medpro — a company linked to Tory peer Baroness Michelle Mone — to receive major public contracts and its tax record

Angela Rayner has drawn up a list of written questions

ft.com/content/0af345… here are some of the questions Rayner is asking ministers

- the @FT today asked both Tory peer Baroness Michelle Mone and her billionaire husband Douglas Barrowman whether any UK tax was paid on these profits from the PPE Medpro deals

- we didn’t get any comment leaving it to my favourite tax expert @DanNeidle to explain why this is a legitimate question

this was the response from Baroness Mone’s lawyer when I asked some quite basic questions two years ago about PPE Medpro this story has been brewing for a while:

in April @AnnaSophieGross reported a National Crime Agency investigation into PPE Medpro

ft.com/content/8b1500…

whatever your politics, @AngelaRayner is one of the most remarkable figures in British politics right now

here is our Lunch with the FT @FT @ftweekend

ft.com/content/ec7bf6… just a few extracts from the Angela Rayner lunch with the @FT

- imagine the uproar if Treasury raised income tax by 5p in the pound?

- Sunak’s decision last year to freeze income tax allowances & thresholds is on track to raise £30bn a year by 2026 due to high inflation

- equivalent to 5p rise in headline rate

ft.com/content/a36987… - the key point here is that in last year’s Budget red book the Treasury expected to raise £8bn a year by 2026 from freezing income tax thresholds for four years

- that figure is now estimated at £30bn due to rampant inflation

🔥 the cross-party culture committee has just flambéed claims from former cabinet minister Nadine Dorries that Channel 4 used actors pretending to be residents in a deprived housing estate “we do not find the origins claims (from Dorries), or the clarifications to be credible and have seen no corroboration of her claims….”