Londoner's Diary: In-out fallout as Labour shakes it all about

Ken Livingstone
Carl Court/Getty Images
15 February 2016

Labour frontbenchers could be forgiven for thinking they’d seen the back of Ken Livingstone. His appointment to “co-convene” Labour’s defence review — hot topic nuclear weapons — with Maria Eagle was controversial, especially when he said one of his critics needed “psychiatric help”.

Last month he said he was leaving it all to new shadow defence secretary Emily Thornberry — a fellow unilateralist — after a hearty pub lunch in her native constituency, Barnsbury. At the same time, however, hacks revealed that Ken had never formally been appointed to the defence review by the NEC. He was co-convenor of Labour’s International Policy Commission, working alongside Hilary Benn, but apart from the man himself, no one ever confirmed that he would be working with Eagle.

And now, interviewed in the lefty Morning Star today, Mr Livingstone reveals that he’s, well, back. And his new partner in crime? “The lovely Hilary Benn,” he purred. A week after that fateful lunch, Livingstone says Labour’s almighty spinner Seumas Milne gave him a call. Labour’s policy commissions are typically co-chaired by a member of the NEC, such as Livingstone, and a frontbencher, but they span more than one ministerial portfolio. So Thornberry’s Trident probe would need to feed into the party’s wider foreign policy commission. “You’ll still be co-chair but we’ll get Hilary Benn in,” Livingstone was told.

So far from being the disruptive one, he says, he is now the great unifier. “You went in the space of about one month of having me and Maria, to having me and Emily, and then me and Hilary. I’m the only consistent stability in all of that.”

Well, that’s one way of describing it.

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Last week it was announced that Alexa Chung has been signed up by M&S to design a range partly based on the store’s classics from past decades but reworked for modern shoppers. At a party in the London Edition Hotel, Alexa wore a red and white, bibbed Grayson Perry dress that looked a bit like she belonged on a prairie. Grayson, who was also at the party and often dresses as his female alter ego “Claire”, said: “I’m surprised she fit into it. I didn’t give it to her — why would I give one of my dresses to a tiny little west London person?’’

Of caravans and unholy thoughts

The Londoner clutched rosary beads at the news that the late Pope John Paul II is the subject of a BBC documentary tonight about his four years of correspondence with married philosopher Anna-Teresa Tymieniecka.

Girlfriend? The Londoner is reminded of how much trouble such accusations cause. When Cardinal Vincent Nichols was Archbishop of Birmingham he had a spiritual friendship with his diary secretary, Sister Carmel Wragg. But after someone questioned whether she had visited him in his holiday home, a caravan near Oxford, the cardinal was furious. “This anonymous allegation is entirely without foundation and, quite simply, malicious,” he said. ‘There is nothing secret about my holiday arrangements.” Good to see a man so proud of his caravan.

Gwendoline Christie
John Phillips/Getty Images

Seeing red is the only way to celebrate a Bafta

There ain’t no party like a Harvey Weinstein party, and last night the über-producer didn’t disappoint with a rousing post-Bafta bash at Holborn’s Rosewood Hotel. Guests were greeted with a flaming tuba-player, chocolate fountains and a bar lined with Grey Goose Le Fizz cocktails but The Londoner naturally only had time for one or two.

Emma Donoghue, playwright, novelist and nominee for her script for Room, quietly watched the party from the edge of the room. But then on came Dolly Parton’s Jolene — as the music begged the beauty with the “flaming locks of auburn hair” to go away, redhead Donoghue could not resist a jig on the dancefloor. Game of Thrones actresses Gwendoline Christie, far right, and Emilia Clarke were thrilled to be reunited — although 6ft 3in Christie had to bend down to greet 5ft 2in Clarke, pictured far left with Hunger Games actor Sam Claflin and director Thea Sharrock.

Also there was costume designer Sandy Powell, left, Doctor Who’s Matt Smith, right, and actresses Dree Hemingway and Bel Powley, top right. Host Stephen Fry and Elliott Spencer proved that the best marriages can be those which allow separate partying: Fry headed home early while Spencer stayed on.

The star of the show was a glamorous woman in a head-to-toe black fur coat, who smiled patiently when The Londoner congratulated her on her performance as the bear in The Revenant. Apologies.

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