Macho game-playing consumes No 10 as Lee Cain quits

Who? That will be the question on almost everyone’s lips this morning as the news that Lee Cain has quit 10 Downing Street dominates headlines and bulletins. Boris Johnson’s director of communications has resigned after the ‘Vote Leave lads’ apparently tried to bounce the Prime Minister into promoting him to chief of staff – but it didn’t work, he has gone and Dominic Cummings could follow. To those at the centre of government, even during coronavirus, it is all just a big game of competitive masculinity and imitating House of Cards safe in the knowledge that highly paid private sector jobs faciliated by revolving doors can always provide a safety net.

The central way in which any of this matters to ordinary people was summed up by a Labour spokesperson last night, who said: “On the day the UK became the first country in Europe to report 50,000 coronavirus deaths and the public endured another day of lockdown, Boris Johnson’s government is fighting like rats in a sack over who gets what job. It is precisely this lack of focus and rank incompetence that has held Britain back. The public deserve better than this incompetence and divided Conservative government.”

In Labour news, LabourList has interviewed Momentum co-founder and former chair Jon Lansman in his final week as a member of Labour’s ruling national executive committee. The Labour left figure has spoken out for the first time about the response of Jeremy Corbyn to the Equality and Human Rights Commission report on Labour antisemitism (“I wasn’t happy with the words that Jeremy used… I think Jeremy’s words were not right”) and the ex-leader’s suspension from the party (with which he “disagree[s] strongly”). You can read the comments here – and there is plenty more to come in the full interview being published later today.