Baroness Mone apologetic but defiant over PPE lies and Prince Andrew faces a bleak January
Plus Penny Mordaunt reveals mystery of vanishing Boris Johnson WhatsApps
Hello everyone, this is usually a quiet fortnight but there’s been lots going in the headlines this past week.
Thank you so much for following along on Instagram and here over the last year. It’s been great to talk news with you.
I’ll be taking a little break next week, but will be back with plenty to discuss in 2024. We’ve got an election in the UK (Rishi Sunak revealed this week) and the US, both of which may deliver major changes. And it’s not just these two nations where people are set to head to the polls, as an estimated 40 countries are to hold elections in 2024.
I hope you have a fantastic Christmas and New Year! Thanks so much for your support. Now, on to the news list.
A vote on a Gaza ceasefire resolution was postponed for a second time at the UN security council on Tuesday. The draft resolution would demand Israel and Hamas allow and facilitate land, sea and air deliveries of aid to and throughout the Gaza Strip and ask the United Nations to monitor humanitarian assistance arriving in the Palestinian enclave. It also called for an “urgent and sustainable cessation of hostilities”, but this language was watered down in a new draft circulated early on Tuesday. The UN draft resolution, drafted by the United Arab Emirates, had been changed in an effort to avoid a third US veto since the conflict began more than two months ago.”.
Hamas and other Palestinian factions have rejected talks on releasing Israeli hostages until Israel stops its military onslaught on Gaza. A statement published by Hamas claimed to reflect a “Palestinian national decision”. It said there “should be no talk about prisoners or exchange deals except after a full cessation of aggression”. About 120 Israelis are still being held by Hamas and Islamic Jihad in Gaza. More than 100 were released in an earlier deal under which hundreds of Palestinian prisoners were also freed and there was a temporary halt in fighting.
Penny Mordaunt (you may remember her from the King’s coronation, where she carried the really big sword for a huge portion of the ceremony) has told the Covid Inquiry that a series of WhatsApp messages with Boris Johnson mysteriously disappeared from her phone. The Conservative MP and leader of the Commons says Johnson’s then chief of staff ignored 14 attempts by her to arrange a meeting to discuss the matter. Mordaunt said she was told by Cabinet Office officials it would cost about £40,000 to examine her phone to determine what had happened. When Johnson gave evidence to the inquiry early this month, he said it had been impossible to retrieve about 5,000 WhatsApp messages from his old phone – covering the crucial period from January to June 2020. In her written statement to the inquiry, Mordaunt said that in early May 2021, media coverage prompted her to look back on old messages from Johnson, but she could not find them.
Prince Harry and fellow phone hacking victims could launch a legal challenge if police do not reopen a criminal investigation into Mirror Group Newspapers. Their legal team have told the BBC they could attempt a private prosecution themselves, if necessary. The High Court last week found evidence of "widespread and habitual" use of phone hacking at the Mirror newspapers. The Met Police said it would consider the judgement but there was no current investigation.
Michelle Mone fights back over PPE deals
What happened? After years of denials, Baroness Michelle Mone admitted in an interview with the BBC that she did stand to benefit from PPE deals made during the pandemic. The former Conservative peer and her husband, Doug Barrowman, have acknowledged for the first time that he made £60million from two PPE deals for a company he led. Around £30million of that has been placed in an offshore trust, which has Barrowman’s children, Mone’s children and Mone as beneficiaries.
What’s the background? The Department of Health and Social Care granted PPE Medpro two contracts worth a total of £203m in May and June 2020. The first, for £80.85m, was to supply 210m face masks, and the second was to supply 25m sterile surgical gowns, for which the government paid £122m. The contracts were processed via the “VIP lane”, which gave high priority and fast-tracked PPE offers from companies introduced by people with connections to the government. Journalists discovered links between PPE Medpro and Barrowman and Mone, including that Mone used her access to the government’s VIP lane to help make the deals, however the couple put up fierce denials. They threatened journalists with defamation action if they printed stories linking them to the company.
So what? Mone and Barrowman are now acknowledging publicly that they were involved in the company. In an interview with the BBC’s Laura Kuenssberg on Sunday, Mone admitted she had lied to the press. She said she regretted it but had done it to protect her family from press attention, not to “pull the wool over anyone’s eyes”. She added: “That’s not a crime, Laura. Saying to the press ‘I’m not involved’, to protect my family, can I just make this clear, it’s not a crime.” While it is not a crime to have lied to the press, or even threatened them with legal action under false pretences, PPE Medpro is under investigation by the National Crime Agency, which says that since May 2021 it has been investigating “suspected criminal offences committed in the procurement of PPE contracts by PPE Medpro”. The DHSC is suing PPE Medpro for the return of the £122m it paid for the gowns under the second contract, plus storage and other costs. The gowns were rejected after inspection when they arrived in the UK, and the government alleges they were unsafe for healthcare workers in the NHS to use. Mone and Barrowman deny any wrongdoing, and say the gowns were cleared by an inspection before they shipped from China.
What next? Mone and Barrowman insist they have done nothing wrong and have vowed to clear their names. Since the BBC interview aired, Mone has been tweeting in the couple’s defence, lobbing accusations at Rishi Sunak and others regarding the government’s role in pandemic contracts. The couple said that the government's handling of PPE had been “shambolic". Mone told the BBC: "It's appalling that over £9.1 billion was over-ordered, five years of stock, of PPE, when it only has a shelf life of two years. And all I will say, right now, is why are we not holding them to account, the [Department of Health]?" The New European plans to sue Michelle Mone to recover legal fees spent by the publisher responding to her ‘deceitful’ threats against the publication over its reporting of the PPE Medpro scandal.
Prince Andrew's alleged links with convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein could come under further scrutiny with the release of hundreds of files from a defamation case. The files will also reveal more than 170 associates of Epstein. The files include 40 documents of evidence from Johanna Sjoberg, who has claimed the Duke of York touched her breast while sitting on a couch inside Epstein's Manhattan apartment in 2001. US Judge Loretta Preska ruled on Monday that documents relating to more than 170 people who were either associates, friends or victims of disgraced US billionaire Epstein should be made public. The documents are part of a 2015 US defamation case by Virginia Giuffre against Ghislaine Maxwell, the British socialite who supplied Epstein with underage girls. The individuals who are set to be named in the documents will have 14 days to appeal against the judge's decision - meaning they are likely to be released in early January.
A fall in inflation in November has raised hopes that the Bank of England will begin cutting interest rates sooner than expected. Inflation - the rate prices rise at - fell from 4.6% to 3.9%, the lowest for more than two years. The Bank has repeatedly increased rates to try to control inflation, driving up mortgage repayments for millions. The Office for National Statistics said that falling petrol prices were largely behind the surprise drop in inflation last month. Slowing prices for food and household goods also contributed. But while inflation is well down from its peak in 2022, it is still almost double the Bank of England's 2% target, and many households will not feel better off as energy bills and borrowing costs remain high.
Donald Trump is ineligible for the US presidency under the constitution's insurrection clause, the Colorado Supreme Court has ruled. The ruling comes as the former US leader prepares to run for the presidency in 2024. He is accused of inciting the Capitol riot on January 6, 2021, in an effort to overturn the result after he lost the US election. The Trump campaign has already said it will appeal to the US Supreme Court, which is dominated by Republican lawmakers. Dozens of similar lawsuits have been filed nationally to disqualify Trump under Section 3 of the constitutions 14th amendment, which was designed to keep former Confederates from returning to government after the Civil War. It bars from office anyone who swore an oath to "support" the Constitution and then "engaged in insurrection or rebellion" against it, and has been used only a handful of times since the decade after the Civil War.
England goalkeeper Mary Earps, has been named the BBC’s Sports Personality of the Year for 2023. The World Cup star described her prize as the “ultimate all-round sporting accolade” as she accepted the trophy in front of an audience of sporting stars in Salford’s Media City. "I'm trying to be a game changer," Earps told BBC Radio 5 Live. “I'm trying to change the world in whatever small time that I'm here. I enjoy the responsibility of being a role model, I try to inspire as many people as possible - young, old, whatever. I want people to relate to me and my journey, see that I'm just a normal person trying to live out her dream.”
What I’m watching
I’ve been enjoying some of my favourite Christmas movies this week. Here are a few of my top picks:
Home Alone. Introduced the kids to it and they loved it. Still fun to watch however old you are.
Love Actually. Ensemble movies have become progressively worse over the years (ever watched Movie 43? If not, then please save yourselves and don’t), however this one I happily watch every Christmas.
Die Hard. It is a Christmas movie. I will die (hard) on this hill.
The Holiday. Not sure how the trans-Atlantic relationships could have worked out after New Year’s Eve, however I still love it.