Uk politics

How is Theresa May's big £20bn funding pledge landing with the public? That's the question Tory MPs are beginning to ask. The Prime Minister's – currently unfunded – early birthday present for the NHS to celebrate its 70th birthday was announced to much fanfare last month. It was meant as an agenda setting policy that would help to define her premiership, show there was more to Mayism than Brexit and boost the Tories' standing with voters. As of yet though, signs of an immediate Tory boost are absent. A YouGov poll – taken 25-26 June about a week after it was announced - puts the Tories ahead with a five-point lead on 42pc and Labour on 37pc. However, it's not that the Tories have gained since the last poll – just that Labour have fallen behind.

The big Brexit crunch meeting at Chequers isn't until Friday but already Tory civil war is breaking out into the open. The divisions in the Conservative party on Brexit had previously been confined to a couple of spats on Twitter. Not any longer if today's Daily Politics bust-up between Ed Vaizey and Owen Paterson is anything to go on. While Tory MPs who appear alongside each other on TV can usually be relied on to back each up, it seems that when it comes to Brexit, these rules don't apply: https://twitter.com/edvaizey?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw Paterson: “You cannot dismiss the election and neither can the Labour party. Theresa May, forget the seats, she got the second largest number of votes since John Major.

As the Cabinet's Brexit crunch meeting draws closer, there's heightened speculation that it's Olly Robbins – the Prime Minister's Europe Adviser and former DexEU Permanent Secretary – who is calling the shots rather than Brexit Secretary David Davis. On Monday, Davis met with Theresa May but it's not clear he was even updated on the 'third way' customs plan in the works. Rumours are circulating that the official Brexit department is being forced to take a back seat in the big Brexit decisions. So, Mr S was curious to note the message sent out by the Permanent Secretary, Philip Rycroft, for the Department for Exiting the European Union to kick off Civil Service Active Wellbeing Week.

To the American ambassador's (early) independence day party. Despite the ambassador now possessing a shiny new embassy in south London – an off-location according to one @realDonaldTrump – guests were invited to Woody Johnson's personal residence Winfield House, north west London. Gavin Williamson and Liz Truss were both in attendance though Mr S understands that the tricky topic of the government spending review did not come up as party chat. Other politicians there included Greg Clark, Tobias Elwood and Thérèse Coffey. In his speech to guests – who munched on hot dogs and Krispy Kreme doughnuts – Johnson said the special relationship was 'alive and well'.

Oh so you all love Danny Dyer now? The turnaround in Dyer’s fortunes over the past 12 hours has been extraordinary. He’s gone from being the butt of posh tweeters’ jokes to a celebrated political sage. From a ridiculous uber-lad whose cosying up to football’s hard men and promiscuous use of words like ‘slags’ and ‘twats’ provoked laughter and/ or horror among the chattering classes, to the Twitterati’s favourite working-class person. What changed? He dissed Brexit. And if you diss Brexit, they love you.

Evening Standard editor, Kissinger Fellow, Honorary Economics Professor, Blackrock Advisor and Stanford Visiting fellow George Osborne is a skilled man at many things – namely job applications. However, as Chancellor Osborne struggled with deficit reduction, repeatedly missing his targets. He seems to now be experiencing economic turbulence in one of his new jobs, as editor of the London Evening Standard. BBC Media Editor Amol Rajan reports that in the space of a year the Standard has gone from a two million pound profit to a ten million pound loss. The paper will post a loss of £10m for the year ending in September 2017. Osborne started at the paper as editor in May 2017. What ever could be the problem?