KEIR STARMER’S decision to lay down arms over Brexit could cost him, Labourites tell us.
“There is no case for rejoining”, the Labour leader, inset, declared during a visit to the North-East this week. “We have exited the EU and we are not going back”. His remarks, however, ruffled feathers.
“There is obviously a case for rejoining the EU”, Labour grandee Lord Adonis tells us. “A majority of the public already think Brexit was a mistake.
“It won’t be long before there is majority support for moving step by step towards rejoin”.
The Labour Movement For Europe, a pro-European Union society whose stated aim is “one-day rejoining”, has tripled its membership in the past two years and this week advertised for a campaign co-ordinator. The European Movement UK, meanwhile, a cross-party organisation chaired by Adonis, doubled its membership last year.
“Labour risks its support base, which has always been majority Remain”, a former Labour adviser tells us.
“The Labour Party needs to acknowledge Brexit’s problems to be able to make a serious offer to the public at the next election on the economy”.
Moving on to tricky terrain.
Lording it over Jackson at the bar
BILLIE WHITELAW, a grande dame of English acting, was no forelock tugger. After a long night shoot on the set of Hot Fuzz in 2006, Whitelaw bumped into Peter Jackson, the Oscar-winning Lord of the Rings director, at the hotel bar at six in the morning. Jackson was ordering tea and sandwiches. Hot Fuzz director Edgar Wright, speaking to the Empire Film Podcast, recalls Whitelaw declaring: “I want a f***ing glass of red wine. And I want my f**king glass of red wine before he gets his f***ing sandwiches”.
Sex Education ‘too close to home’
GILLIAN ANDERSON worried that playing sex therapist Jean Milburn in TV show Sex Education, might impact her family. “The only risk that I saw with Jean was from my two teenage boys and having a mother who was playing a character like this would seriously damage them psychologically,” she told a British Library event last night. The star, left, added that she feared it might “damage them at school” too. In the line of fire.
Presenter Webb: I can’t say T-word
JUSTIN WEBB’S mother had such an influence on him that he can’t use certain words. “Even now I cannot say, in a BBC script, the word ‘toilet’... I cannot bring myself to say it,” the Today programme presenter told a 5x15 event last night. Webb has just released his memoir The Gift Of A Radio about his childhood. He added: “And let’s be blunt when Jeremy Hunt was culture secretary we quite often said ruder things than toilet on the air.” It was Webb himself who made the unfortunate slip — replacing Hunt’s name for the rudest word in the English language. Now we know the full extent of his pain.
Stepping inside the world of Kanye
THE Jeen-Yuhs Experience landed at One Marylebone last night, allowing guests to step inside the world of Kanye West’s new autobiographical documentary. Presenter Zeze Millz and models Eva Apio and Neelam Gill made the bash.
At the Lyric Hammersmith poet Jackie Kay and Bridgerton stars Adjoa Andoh and Ruby Barker were at the press night for new play, Running With Lions, about a Jamaican family.
SW1A
CRISPIN BLUNT MP has recalled what it was like fighting an election as a Tory in the Eighties. After a lunch, a councillor took Blunt out and told him how he canvassed: “I knock on the door and I say I’m Bob Lawrence, I’m your Conservative candidate for the council and I’m in favour of hanging.” Bracing.
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GAVIN BARWELL knows the mind of a Tory plotter. “They probably wouldn’t want to take over right now”, Theresa May’s former chief of staff tells the NS podcast. “They would be thinking, ‘Let Boris Johnson take this really difficult period’… and the best thing for us would be a change over the summer”. Ominous.
