Waugh Zone News Today

Boris Johnson You’re reading The Waugh Zone, our daily politics briefing. Sign up now to get it by email in the evening. It was Wednesday, just after noon and, in an imposing building overlooking the Thames in Westminster, the questions on football and racism were coming thick and fast. But the venue was not the House of Commons and the speaker was not the prime minister. In the fortified bowels of MI5’s Thames House HQ, director general (aka the ‘DG’) Ken McCallum was answering queri...

Updated 2 hours ago PM attempts the biggest privatisation so far: the privatisation of government responsibility Daniel Leal-OlivasPA You’re reading The Waugh Zone, our daily politics briefing. Sign up now to get it by email in the evening. You know it’s time to get worried when Boris Johnson starts talking about honesty. Last year, when he was still refusing to trigger lockdown ahead of the first Covid wave, he actually said “I must level with you, level with the British pu...

Updated 5 hours ago Conservative complacency offers an opportunity, but MPs now want follow-through Danny LawsonPA You’re reading The Waugh Zone, our daily politics briefing. Sign up now to get it by email in the evening. It was at just after dawn, at 5.14 am, that Keir Starmer was passed the intel that his party was close to winning its first new MP under his leadership. Already wide awake at his north London home, he got the news from the local campaign team in Batley and Spen...

Moderates hope for a ‘clean sweep’. But Howard Beckett thinks he’s got the momentum.

Foreign hols looking unlikely but the real danger is how fast the Indian variant spreads at home

Updated 1 hour ago Forget Gavin Williamson, it’s the PM who is the real target of Collins’ broadside You’re reading The Waugh Zone, our daily politics briefing. Sign up now to get it by email in the evening. This was meant to be a quiet week. Commons in recess, a ‘holding pattern’ on Covid, Whitehall treading water while it waits for the latest data on the pandemic. Aside from an update on foreign travel from Grant Shapps on Thursday, the big ‘event’ marked on the No.1...

Updated 4 hours ago Tricky questions for Hancock and the PM about the past, but caution now has premium You’re reading The Waugh Zone, our daily politics briefing. Sign up now to get it by email in the evening. Whenever journalists hear a politician sidestep a direct question from MPs, our antennae twitch. When that politician repeatedly body swerves the same question from reporters, we smell a rat. Yet time and again, ministers seem unaware of the old newsroom motto: you can’...

What a week.

1. No.10 was a Covid chaos zone The whole point of Dominic Cummings’ evidence was to provide the first draft of the history of the government’s handling of the pandemic. While his personal opinions on what went wrong can be dismissed, his eye-witness testimony cannot be easily shrugged off. And on that score, he didn’t disappoint, giving vivid accounts of the chaos in Downing Street as Covid hit landfall in March 2020. His description of the events of over two key days allowed the public ...

Updated 5 hours ago Boris Johnson Proves Travel Policy Chaos Works As Well At Home As Abroad After ‘amber list’ confusion, PM under fire over advice on trips to and from Covid hotspots You’re reading The Waugh Zone, our daily politics briefing. Sign up now to get it by email in the evening. You’ve got to feel for the people of Bolton. Under the government’s current Covid travel guidance, they’re advised against visiting a neighbouring town, but they are allowed to get on...