Paul Waugh

May 24, 2024 | inews.co.uk | Paul Waugh

Rishi Sunak and small talk are uneasy bedfellows at the best of times. So it was no surprise that he came a cropper this week when he asked Welsh brewery workers if they were “looking forward to the football” – only to be told Wales hadn’t actually qualified for Euro 2024. The Prime Minister’s try-hard desire for credibility among football fans may even have been part of the reason he allowed himself to get drenched in Downing Street as he called the general election on Wednesday.

May 17, 2024 | inews.co.uk | Paul Waugh

When Rishi Sunak was asked by Loose Women co-host Kaye Adams if he was a fan of the ITV lunchtime show this week, his answer was a sign of things to come. Admitting the programme was only watched occasionally in No 10 “in the back of the office”, he half-joked that “being here is probably on the more intimidating end of things I’ve had to do”. If anyone in Downing Street had supposed this was going to be an easy ride on daytime telly, they clearly hadn’t done their homework.

May 11, 2024 | inews.co.uk | Paul Waugh

Amid all the chatter about polls in the run up to this year’s local elections, one finding got much less attention than it should have. A JL Partners survey of viewers of the GB News TV channel found Labour was on 39 per cent, the Tories 29 per cent and Reform on 20 per cent.

May 3, 2024 | inews.co.uk | Paul Waugh

As the local election results filter in over this weekend, Tory party chairman Richard Holden will have his work cut out to spin them as anything like good news. But despite the hammer blow of another Parliamentary by-election loss in Blackpool South, and possibly hundreds of local council seats, Holden will be hoping for two silver linings amid the electoral storm clouds.

Apr 19, 2024 | inews.co.uk | Paul Waugh

Another week, another Tory sleaze scandal. Mark Menzies, the MP who allegedly misused party funds following a 3am phone call to pay off “bad people”, is the latest poster boy for Conservative probity in public life. In what feels like a surreal arms race to out-weird other backbenchers suspended in the past few years, Menzies reportedly rang an elderly Tory volunteer to say he was locked in a flat and needed £5,000 as “a matter of life and death”.