Watch out, Rishi. As party conference season starts, with his party miles behind in the polls, a large delegation of Right-wing Tory MPs turned out to launch Danny Kruger’s new book in Parliament last night.
Underneath a banner reading “A New Vision For Conservative Politics”, attendees including Home Secretary Suella Braverman, Business Secretary Kemi Badenoch and Energy Secretary Claire Coutinho watched Kruger speak about his short tome Covenant: The New Politics of Home, Neighbourhood and Nation.
Kruger called for the party to “unite in the right place” or they would “go down together”, and said voters “want their country back”. “We are the future. It might look a bit like the past, but that’s OK,” Kruger said hopefully. His policy ideas include tax breaks for families, getting out of the European Convention on Human Rights, and more funding for the army. He caused a small furore recently when suggesting the return of something like national service, and has said he wants to turn the clock back.
Kruger also had a pop at Rory Stewart, who he said was “wrong for ten years" but still says he’s right now, and called Iain Duncan Smith, the first Tory leader he worked for, his "first true love" and the “most authentically Conservative" leader this century. Some noticed that the Wiltshire MP even channeled a little of Boris Johnson, with ruffled hair, and referencing the "oikos", the ancient Greek word for family.
Speaking to The Londoner, Kruger said we "need to get taxes down... sooner rather than later". When we tried to ask about the return of tax loving Liz Truss, he walked away. Kruger's mum is Bake Off star Prue Leith, but guests were served fish and chips and onion bhajis.
New Vogue boss’s Evening Standard past
Congratulations to Chioma Nnadi, who has been announced as the new head of British Vogue following Edward Enninful’s departure. We hear there were clenched teeth on front rows yesterday, as fashion hacks who had applied for the coveted job but were passed over put on a brave face. Nnadi herself hasn’t put in an appearance at fashion week yet. Her title breaks new ground, as she’s “head of editorial content”, rather than editor-in-chief of the mag. That’s said to mean more control from the New York offices.
Nnadi is moving back to London from NYC. She has been working at Vogue since 2010, and early in her career she had a stint as a writer at the Evening Standard magazine. While at ES, she wrote fashion round-ups, interviewed celebs like Sadie Frost and Ralf Little, and helped cover London Fashion Week in 2002. Nnadi also penned some longer pieces, including a feature about what she coined “the Chardonnay pound”, the lucrative part of the economy made up of single women, and how companies like All Bar One were tapping into it. Nnadi also wrote a cheat’s guide to a better bottom, which included salon treatments, better clothes and surgery. Here’s to pastures new.
Fashion week rolls on
It’s tough making sure you have enough stamina for fashion week. Actors Lily James and Gugu Mbatha-Raw, and model Alexa Chung are hanging in there, donning ballgowns for the Vogue100 and Erdem dinner at the National Portrait Gallery last night. We were over at the Perfect X Valentino party at the newly opened 1 Hotel Mayfair, with model Adwoa Aboah and singer Mahalia, who told us she was “so hungover” from the night before, but was keeping the party going. Popstar Charlie XCX was there and said the JW Anderson show was her favourite. Her favourite bashes are when “it doesn’t feel like a fashion week party and you just get really drunk and have a really good time”. Hear, hear.
