Worrying about your mortgage payments? Rishi’s got a calculator to help
Back during the Tory leadership election last year – no not that one, the one before – Mr Sunak leapt on Liz Truss’ spending promises and warned of their effect on everyone’s mortgages.
He cited one of her backers, the free market economist Patrick Minford, who said “more expensive mortgages were “part of the adjustment” and “Hopefully out of this we’ll get to a more healthy economy with interest running at 3, 5, 7 per cent.”
Mr Sunak even launched a helpful ‘calculator’, to show you how much your mortgage would go up if interest rates hit 5 per cent under Liz Truss.
The good news is that never happened, the bad news is it’s happened under Rishi Sunak, as the Bank of England confirmed this week.
Mysteriously that 5 per cent mortgage calculator website was quietly taken offline by team Sunak a couple of months ago.
Thankfully Sir Arbuthnot has managed to retrieve the calculator in full from the ever-useful Internet Archive, so thanks to Rishi Sunak you can quickly find out what his own failure to tackle inflation is going to do to your disposable income.
CLICK HERE to try it out
You’re very welcome, Prime Minister…
Westminster party season
This week saw the joyous and well-timed launch of Westminster’s annual summer party season, with boozy receptions from news outlets, think tanks, policy wonks and even Rupert Murdoch (presumably the invite for that last one got lost in the post).
Here’s a rundown of some of the last week’s highlights – a peek behind the veil.
- The week started with Conservative Home in the gardens of Westminster Abbey. Tory MPs in their droves moved closer to God in order to avoid the awkward vote on the Privileges Committee report.
- A dapper James Cleverly was the star speaker, though fumbled the ball a bit with a speech that went on for too long and veered between jokes about OnlyFans and scatology to his analysis of geopolitics.
- Sir Arbuthnot didn’t think Environment Secretary Therese Coffey was particularly delighted to hear the co-sponsors of the event – RSPB and Water UK – say the UK has “knackered” its environment
- Penny Mordaunt took Parliament by storm on Tuesday, speaking at the annual summer Press Gallery drinks reception; taking on everyone from the country’s most high-profile political editors to her MP colleague Gary Sambrook, or – as she called him – “Gary ‘you wouldn’t want to be behind him in a kebab shop’ Sambrook”
- She took swipes at both Boris and Truss:
- Of Boris she referred to attempts by bitter MPs to try and take sketchwriter Quentin Letts’ press pass off him, “which is becoming a bit of a thing now”
- Of Liz: “You withstand criticism from all quarters; even this week from Liz Truss, usually a staunch defender of the media. Her demise was apparently your fault, you didn’t understand any of her ideas, presumably because you had collectively failed to secure an interview with her during her leadership campaign.”
Hacks managed to drink the entire bar dry in just 80 minutes. Very impressive, especially given the thimble-sized wine glasses.
One Westminster source revealed Beachcomber himself had originally featured as the butt of a joke in Penny’s first draft. After sitting through that brutal roast, he’s glad changes were made…
Question of the week
One well-sourced rumour from a mid-week party: which former newspaper editor has joined forces with a prominent former Government special advisor to help run Daniel Korski’s Tory mayoral campaign?
Talking of the mayoral campaign
Onlookers in the wings at last week’s Tory mayoral husting were astonished to see dark horse candidate Moz Hossain arrive very late, run to the stage and before facing the audience do a lip and body warm up that, if the mime was to be believed, seemed to have been ripped straight out of High School Musical.
For the few younger readers for whom this won’t go over their heads, he apparently performed a lip warm up comparable to that of Sharpay and Ryan’s…
No. 10 now also blocking porn transparency
A month ago, Sir Arbuthnot revealed that the House of Commons was blocking an FOI release that would have shown how often Parliamentary staff were trying to access adult material while logged into the communal wifi network.
They did so on the grounds that publishing it could “undermine the safeguarding of national security”.
The decision seemed absurd given Downing Street – a building much more directly associated with national security – happily admitted that advisors and civil servants had visited hardcore porn websites 1,700 times between 2016 and 2019.
Well now, Downing Street’s also answered the same FOI – and to no avail.
Unlike Parliament, they simply claim: “Searches of our records have not identified information in scope of your request.”
Another letter to the information commissioner me thinks…
