JOURNALIST Michael Crick has set up a scheme to make sure fewer ‘rotten apple’ MPs get elected after a series of political scandals. Chris Pincher, right, resigned as deputy chief whip last week having allegedly groped two guests at the Carlton Club. Crick will monitor how political parties decide on their candidates.
“In safe seats they are choosing candidates who are effectively the MP for 20 years with very little scrutiny,” Crick told us. In Unherd, Crick writes that “more MPs have gone to jail in the last two decades than at any time in the last 200 years. Voters deserve better than the likes of Pincher, [Charlie] Elphicke and the rest of their disgraced colleagues”. “We have the right to be angry... they should never have been picked in the first place.”
Old ones are still the best...
Mick Jagger was on funny form at BST Hyde Park last night, joking that guitarist Ronnie Wood “has a young family to feed”, with six-year-old twins. Jagger’s youngest is five. The singer told the crowd it was the fifth time the Rolling Stones had played the venue, with the first a legendary free gig in 1969. “The rest have been not free,” he said. Yesterday cheaper tickets were around £100.
Wimbledon day out for couples
ACTOR Sienna Miller and model Alexa Chung played doubles with dates at Wimbledon yesterday. Miller was with actor boyfriend Oli Green, while Chung was seen kissing thesp Tom Sturridge, who has a child with Miller. Miller got a group selfie at the Vogue and Ralph Lauren event. Also at SW19 with Lanson were actor couple Thomas Brodie-Sangster and Talulah Riley, and Downton Abbey’s Michelle Dockery attended with Jaguar. At Henley Regatta, Jaime Winstone vaped in the Riot Labs x Chinawhite enclosure, and Superdry boss Julian Dunkerton’s designer wife Jade Holland Cooper announced the couple are expecting their second child.
Griff calls out sexism at festivals
POPSTAR Griff tells The Londoner music festivals need to get more women on the bill. “It’s always heartbreaking when the line-ups come out,” she said at the Nordoff Robbins charity-sponsored Silver Clef music awards on Friday. Stats show only 13 per cent of headliners at UK festivals this year are women. “All of us young women coming up feel the pressure and the inequality of it,” she said.
Mercer’s unhelpful suggestion
FORMER minister Johnny Mercer says MPs have too many advisers. “I am yet to meet a special adviser with any specialist advice” he said. The ex-Army man also thinks politicos are too rude to civil servants. Home Secretary Priti Patel is accused of bullying staff. “If you’d have talked to people like that in the Army, you would have got punched in the mouth,” he said. Violence is not the answer.
