The Right Dishonourable

The London mayoral candidate Neville Watson has dropped out of the race due to a lack of money. “As we have not been able to raise the required financial commitment to run, our mayoral 2021 challenge ends today,” he told the Right Dishonourable last night.

Mayoral candidates must stump up a £10,000 deposit to enter the race, forfeiting the money if they fail to get 5% of the first round vote. By comparison, those running for the House of Commons only need a £500 deposit, which is returned if they get 5% of their constituency’s votes.

This week’s duel between the prime minister and the leader of the opposition saw the shadow foreign secretary caught by a stray if inaccurate shot. Defending the government’s new integrated foreign policy review, Boris Johnson tried to paint Lisa Nandy as some kind of peacenik.

“It is frankly satirical to be lectured about the size of the army when the shadow foreign secretary herself wrote only recently that the entire British Army should be turned into a kind of peace corps,” Johnson told the House of Commons during Prime Minister’s Questions. But this is untrue.

A launch event for Robert Tombs’ latest book This Sovereign Isle led to a cheeky allegation about the parentage of Brexit. Outlining the reasons for us having exited the European Union, the author flagged Britain’s retention of the pound as a “decisive difference” between us and other member states.

“If there is a reason that explains Brexit it is surely that,” he told the event hosted by the think tank Policy Exchange. “Every other issue is secondary, simply because once one is in the euro leaving it becomes extremely risky, not only to national finances and to a national economy, but to everyone’s savings in the bank. And for that reason I think one can regard Gordon Brown as the father of Brexit.”