Londoner’s Diary
Was poor Michael Gove made homeless for nothing? Until the general election, the Tory secretary of state for levelling up and housing had been living for free in one of the Government's grandest properties, 1 Carlton Gardens, a Grade II listed mansion by Buckingham Palace worth £25 million. The grace-and-favour home is usually reserved for the Foreign Secretary but Liz Truss didn't want it when she held that job and David Cameron was happy to let Gove carry on living there too. It was a stopover pad for him following his divorce from wife Sarah Vine in 2021. Gove enjoyed his near three-year stint at the residence, which comprises three bedrooms, two dining rooms and a ballroom. He was once ticked off after bringing party guests onto the roof.
But during the election campaign, Gove packed his bags with an uncertain future ahead. A removals van was spotted outside Carlton Gardens on polling day. The outgoing housing secretary was facing his own personal housing crisis, yet now the property is sitting empty. While the residence was cleared for incoming Foreign Secretary David Lammy, our spies have spotted Lammy happily going about his business in the street in north London where he has lived for years. Asked by neighbours if he has any plans to move, the Foreign Sec has given a firm "no, no, no". Man of the people.
Hacked off
Tomorrow evening, the PM will open No 10 to those select journalists of "the Lobby" who report from parliament. It's a long-running tradition of hospitality, but the free-for-all invitations of past years have been tightened under this government. Allocations for places have varied across outlets and one major paper didn't receive any. We hear its political editor sent a terse email to the PM's director of comms.
Truss fund
Member of the public Liz Truss, who lost her seat at the election, will still be gracing us with political insights. The latest company accounts for The Office of Liz Truss show that she has accrued £104.000 in funding.
No Labour of love
Left-wing columnist and ex-Labour member Owen Jones often scraps with MPs from his old party. But one who says he feels hurt by it all is Luke Akehurst, new Labour MP for North Durham. "Owen is the one thought I got on with on a personal level... in 2015 or 2016 he spoke at a constituency dinner in Oxford and said really nice things about me in his speech," he said on We Are Labour's podcast. Akehurst is an avowed Zionist and has clashed with Jones over Gaza. "It's a shame that he's kind of drifted off into a very personalised vitriolic politics," Akehurst added. Perhaps a little rich - when Jones quit the Labour party, Akehurst described it as “pathetic”.
