Case Notes

Am I misremembering this in the heat, or did not the valiant Donald Trump overthrow the brutal dictatorship in Venezuela? Yet in relation to the earthquakes, our own fearless Fourth Estate continues to interview only exiled Opposition figures. Why are they still two thousand miles away in New York? And why is it unconscionable to ask anyone from the Government on the ground? Still, if such persons are to be given airtime, then how about asking them, not who they were against, but what they were in favour of? Some of us already know.

This is what real regime change looks like. They will all have known that Nick Thomas-Symonds had been investigated over his inappropriate texts to women. But now they are making it known to the rest of us. Thomas-Symonds is one of Keir Starmer’s closest allies, and text messages will be the very, very least of it. Andy Burnham’s Downing Street will be no nunnery, any more than was that of Gordon Brown, Theresa May or Rishi Sunak. But it will not be the bordello of Starmer, Liz Truss, Boris Johnson, David Cameron or Tony Blair.

Speaking of the Johnson depravity, Simon Case came up through GCHQ and the Royal Households, as a spook and a courtier, to become the Prime Minister’s handler and fixer, in that order, for such is seen as the real role of the Cabinet Secretary and Head of the Home Civil Service. Case was said to be on the brink of quitting over the Lockdown Files, but he never did. His name always came up far too often, but his appointment was a triumph for the Court Party that the then Prince Charles had spent decades creating and consolidating, ably assisted in recent years by Prince William. That is now firmly established as an alternative centre of power and patronage in London. For example, it has become impossible to imagine the approval of any planning application to which the King had taken exception.

Fair play to Prince William, who is considerably older than Stormzy, for being Stormzy’s gym buddy, thus linking his court to Jeremy Corbyn’s. But as times changed, so the tactic shifted to the installation of the Prince’s Private Secretary as Downing Street Permanent Secretary with a view to elevating him as quickly as possible to Head of the Home Civil Service. That was achieved. Was Case at any of the Downing Street parties? It is wildly improbable that he did not attend even so much as one of them. Yet he was put in charge of investigating them. Even though, at that point, they had officially never happened. When it turned out that they had, then he was not sacked. He never was. Nor was he fined the £10,000 that, unlike many other people in the same position, he would easily have been able to pay. Having been found medically unfit to appear before the Covid-19 Inquiry, he has since been raised to the peerage, appointed to chair the £200 million Team Barrow partnership, and appointed to the Ethics Board of Electric Twin, Ben Warner’s AI startup. And now he has given a keynote interview to the Daily Telegraph. Shades of Eleanor Donaldson, whom I for one fully expect to be ennobled in due season.