Londoner’s Diary
Left-arm spinner Monty Panesar might have launched his political career yesterday, but should we all have been so surprised? The former England cricketer has been talking on and off about such a move for years.
“It is still early days, but I hope Sadiq Khan will pass the baton to me as the Mayor of London,” he said optimistically back in 2019 to an Indian newspaper, admitting that “politics does interest me”. While Mayor Khan is yet to extend the hand of friendship, it appears the spin bowler is aiming for even loftier heights now. “My aspiration in politics is to one day become Prime Minister,” he wrote in an article published yesterday. Stranger things have happened.
Panesar announced he was joining George Galloway’s Workers Party of Britain yesterday outside the Houses of Parliament to much fanfare. He will be standing at the general election in Ealing Southall, where he would need to overturn Labour MP Virendra Sharma’s 16,000 majority. Panesar wants to scrap Ulez, hold a referendum on Net Zero and have fan-owned football teams.
But his knowledge of global politics seems a little patchier. When asked by journalists for his opinion on the conflict in Gaza, he responded: “George is an expert on that”.
His message for the constituents of Ealing Southall? “Beware, Monty’s here.” That should get the vote out.
A Labour of love for tattoos
Shadow Culture Secretary Thangam Debbonaire has been showing off a new tattoo, some lines of verse from the Scottish poet Robert Montgomery. It left us wondering: will an incoming Labour cabinet be the most inked in history? Deputy leader Angela Rayner has four tattoos, including a Labour red rose on her ankle, a Celtic love knot on her wrist, and a Manchester bee on her shoulder.
Shadow Business secretary Jonathan Reynolds also has the Mancunian bee. Former shadow cabinet minister Jess Phillips says she has “some Spice Girls era tattoos”, including one on her midriff she got aged 13. The question is: what is Keir Starmer hiding?
Cummings launches a miniseries
Large-brained political fixer Dominic Cummings is back after some time away from the front line. The last time we heard from him, he said Rishi Sunak had offered him a job, but his conditions were too steep. Now he is moving into the audio-visual medium as an influencer. On Substack he has released episode one of a series about the political system. The video is taken at a dodgy angle and features Cummings reading off a script for 60 seconds. It dwells on his usual themes: crap politicians, crapper civil servants. “Share with friends who want to know how government really works,” he says at the end. The one catch? The video is behind a paywall on his £10 a month blog, where he posts, er, once a month. If Cummings wants to reach the masses, a move to TikTok and some snappy graphics might be in order.
