Rory Stewart joined Tories snapping at Boris Johnson’s heels last night by flirting with a return to politics.
“I would love to try again sometime,” the former MP told a How To Academy audience, qualifying that he would have to proceed with “caution” to make sure he could live by his principles without “blowing myself up”.
Stewart stood down as an MP in 2019 shortly after an unsuccessful leadership bid. Speaking by videolink from his temporary home in Jordan, he said politics needed change. “I think we have to stop voting for monsters,” he said, and had even been workshopping slogans, suggesting a “cheeky” retooling of Brexit slogan Take Back Control to combat the “out of control” current regime. The campaign starts here?
‘Football’s the campest sport’
Gary Lineker hopes there will be many openly gay footballers in years to come. “Football is probably the campest sport around,” the presenter told an audience at the Design Museum’s new football exhibition last night. Blackpool player Jake Daniels came out as the UK’s first gay current player this month, and Lineker expects others to join him. “There’s another top player contemplating coming out. I know who it is, but obviously I can’t share that.”
Bending a knee at the diamond store
Jenna Coleman joined Lady Amelia Windsor and Mia Regan at jeweller Chaumet’s New Bond Street store last night, where one keen partygoer got down on one knee with diamonds bought in the shop. In Cannes, Sharon Stone glittered at the Cancer America gala hosted by David Unger and Darren Strowger at the Hotel du Cap-Eden-Roc, while Letitia Wright attended the after party for her film “The Silent Twins”. Back in London, Dame Joan Collins‘ husband Percy Gibson escorted her out of Langan’s Brasserie after Hello!’s Platinum Jubilee Party, while in Soho, John Legend played an intimate set at Ronnie Scott’s, cheered on by a crowd including his wife Chrissy Teigen and Stormzy.
Museum exhibit brings youth for podcaster
Guilty Feminist presenter Deborah Frances-White tells us working on the British Museum’s new Feminine Power exhibition has given her a new lease of life. “I am delighted to be one of the youngest things in the British Museum,” the podcaster told us. She thinks the exhibition shows the limits of the so-called “trans debate”. “Gender fluidity is also alive in the ancients and we need to calm down about it,” she said.
Harris warns PM: the end can be sudden
Robert Harris says readers would “throw the book aside” in disbelief if he put the extent of partygate in one of his novels. And the author says change can come quickly in Westminster. “Everything comes to an end in politics,” Harris told us at the launch of Andrew Hunter Murray’s new novel The Sanctuary last night. “And it comes to an end quicker than you expect”.
