Londoner's Diary
Dominic Cummings is still updating his sh*t list of journalists and pundits. The former adviser to Boris Johnson made the list, which is available on Twitter/X, to keep track of commentators who annoy him (and to take digs at old adversaries).
Over the weekend Lewis Goodall, a presenter of the News Agents podcast, made the list. When Cummings worked in No 10 and Goodall was a Sky News journalist, the pair had a testy walking-and-talking exchange in Westminster which nearly resulted in Goodall stumbling into oncoming traffic. They don’t seem to have patched things up.
Times columnist Iain Martin said making the list was “a compliment” and described Cummings’s career as “a tragic story” of a man “condemned to sit around moaning about the press”. We noticed another amendment this weekend.
Policy wonk Sam Freedman, whom Cummings worked with at the Department for Education, appeared on the original list last week. Freedman responded by claiming “he used to call me ‘dwarf’ when we worked together”, and said the list “seems like an upgrade”. He has since been removed.
A gap in coverage
With reports in The Sun that the Prime Minister's phone number has been leaked online, leading to attempted prank calls, we wonder what is going on with politicians and their mobiles. Boris Johnson lost access to one of his, which has sent the Covid-19 inquiry down a blind alley searching for some pandemic communications, Liz Truss was hacked and Matt Hancock handed his WhatsApps over to Isabel Oakeshott. One source of the problem: Westminster, more than any other workplace, knows little to no distinction between professional and personal, and much government business is done by text.
Prepare for boarding?
Countess Spencer has come out against the “whole madness of sending children away at eight” as her husband, Earl Spencer, prepares to publish a book on the subject of boarding school. A Very Private School will combine recollections of this “common trauma” with historical analysis, and is due out next year. Lady Spencer said the research and writing has “made for a challenging five years”.
We wonder how the Spencers’ in-laws, the royal family, feel about the question. Royal children have traditionally boarded — as Prince William and Prince Harry did. Harry made clear his views on boarding in Spare, his memoir. So what of the current royal children? All three are still day pupils.
