The Daily Mail brushed aside the lobbying scandal currently engulfing the government – by claiming to expose the ‘Labour mole’ behind the leaks.
Columnist Dan Hodges says he has it on good authority that someone working for Sir Keir Starmer has infiltrated the government ranks.
Channeling his inner Jed Mercurio he says one minister has told him there is “no other explanation” other than a mole for all the recent leaks.
They have become unnerved of late by the way Sir Keir has kept pre-empting major policy announcements with his own identical proposals.
But this scandal has “basically confirmed where all this stuff is coming from”.
Earlier today a Conservative grandee warned that Boris Johnson risks losing his election gains against Labour if he does not clean up the “shameful” Westminster lobbying controversy.
Sir Bernard Jenkin, chair of the Commons Liaison Committee – made up of senior MPs, has urged the Prime Minister to get a grip on the lobbying system following a series of revelations in the wake of Greensill Capital’s collapse into administration.
A failure to be “more transparent” than previous administrations could risk the so-called “red wall” seats that Mr Johnson built his 2019 majority on, Sir Bernard suggested.
A series of probes have been commissioned, including by Downing Street, as Westminster looks to understand the role former prime minister David Cameron played in securing Whitehall access for Greensill, which was selected to delve out Government Covid support loans at the start of the pandemic and whose collapse now risks thousands of jobs, particularly in the steel sector.
The saga deepened last week after it emerged the former head of government procurement, Bill Crothers, took a part-time position with the failed firm while in his Whitehall post.
Writing in The Observer, Sir Bernard said the “lines between public service and private gain” had become “blurred”.
The senior Tory described the current situation as “shameful” and “utterly corrosive of public trust in government”.
In an apparent dig at the former Remain-backing Cameron government, he added: “This should matter to Boris Johnson.
“He does not need to pretend to be a saint, but his ‘red wall’ voters, who gave him his majority, will start to dismiss him unless he can show he is more open, more transparent and very different from the out-of-touch elite he defeated in the 2016 referendum and ousted from government.”
Related: ‘Architect of austerity’ used Greensill jets to travel to £120k an hour speaking gigs
