IT was Sunday, so breakfast was naturally the order of the day. But egg on faces and ketchup on trousers were probably not in the best laid plans of those out to make headlines yesterday.
First to come a cropper was Sky News journalist Niall Paterson, standing in for a holidaying Sophy Ridge. The Scot, from Alloway, had clearly not read Sunday Breakfast Show Presenting for Dummies.
We know this because at 08.00, an hour before the show was due to start, he had spilled ketchup down the front of his trousers. How did we know? Because a helpful colleague had posted a video of Paterson frantically trying to clean the stain.
The lesson of the story was: thou shalt not have breakfast while wearing your on air outfit. It was his birthday, too. Happily, there was a change of fortune on the way with guest Gina Miller gifting Paterson a scoop. Miller was the businesswoman who ensured the UK parliament had its say before the Brexit process could begin. She was now “reassembling” her legal team, which made them sound like The Avengers, to fight any attempt to prorogue parliament to force through a no-deal Brexit.
A letter had been sent last Thursday to Boris Johnson, she revealed, telling him that suspending parliament would be an abuse of a Prime Minister’s powers and as such would provoke legal action.
The face on which egg had been liberally smeared belonged to Neil Basu, the assistant commissioner of the Metropolitan Police, who suggested journalists could be prosecuted for publishing leaked documents. The Sunday papers were outraged, and television then picked up the baton, with almost every guest asked to choose a side between the plucky, freedom defending media or the police. No-one chose the latter.
The week’s other main story, the continuing row over antisemitism in Labour, was chewed over again. On Sophy Ridge on Sunday, Dame Margaret Hodge said she felt “devastated” on watching the Panorama programme featuring eight whistleblowers from the party. Why not just quit, Paterson asked. Dame Margaret said her relationship with Labour had been like a marriage: while the last three years had been terrible, she had had 54 years of complete happiness.
Paterson continued the marriage theme by saying that finding out your other half was antisemitic might be considered reasonable grounds for divorce.
Shadow Foreign Secretary Emily Thornberry was in a similarly mournful mode on The Andrew Marr Show. “Nobody can pretend that there isn’t an ongoing problem within the Labour Party about antisemitism, about our processes for dealing with it,” she said.
READ MORE: Scottish Labour attacked
Like Dame Margaret, she thought it was wrong to set lawyers on the whistleblowers. “We shouldn’t be going for the messengers, we should be looking at the message.”
On Marr, the editor of The Spectator, Fraser Nelson, said Labour was in a state of civil war, split between Jeremy Corbyn and the membership on one side and Tom Watson and MPs on the other. “They are going to go at each other all summer. It is just going to get worse.”
Marr’s main guest was Amber Rudd, the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions. Given she had now accepted no-deal Brexit as an option, having previously voted against, Marr wanted to know if this was an elegant pivot towards reality or a screeching careerist U-turn. In the day’s most unsurprising answer, Ms Rudd said it was the former. She had changed her mind because the circumstances had changed. Marr then reminded her that she had once said another referendum was preferable to a no deal. Did she still believe that? Turned out she no longer agreed with herself on that point, either.
READ MORE: Minister told to get a grip
Ms Rudd will be remembered for saying during the EU referendum campaign that Boris Johnson was the life and soul of the party but not the man you would want to drive you home at evening’s end. Could Marr take it that she would not serve in a Johnson cabinet?
“I’m fighting for a Cabinet for Jeremy Hunt. While that is still the case I don’t think we should speculate on the alternative candidate.”
Marr then teased her with a Tweet from MP Nick Boles, which said: “So she will let Boris Johnson drive her home after all – so long as it’s in a ministerial limo.” Mr Boles had later softened, saying that Ms Rudd brought “humanity to government” and that he hoped she stayed, whoever won. “He’s a generous spirited fellow,” Marr agreed.
It was left to Gordon Brewer on Sunday Politics Scotland to cut through the static and find out something that mattered to the majority of people watching.
READ MORE: Supplies 'cannot be guaranteed'
His main guest was Michael Russell, Scotland’s Constitutional Relations Secretary, who said that in the event of a no deal Brexit he could not guarantee the supply of essential medicines.
Arrangements had been in place for a March 29 departure, but London had yet to finalise its preparations for October 31, he said.
Not that he wanted that to be the major takeaway from politics this weekend. The real headline message, according to Mr Russell, was that the two candidates for the Tory leadership were trying to normalise the notion of no deal.
“We’ll decide the headlines,” Brewer replied.
Freedom of the press is still alive and well. For now.
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