PARLIAMENT: Put on those shorts, parliament is now in recess.
IN COURT: Andreas Dowling, who is accused of sending a hoax bomb threat to parliament and the U.S. Super Bowl, is due to appear in court … Westminster VIP paedophile accuser Carl Beech is due to be sentenced in Newcastle … More climate change protestors from Extinction Rebellion are due to appear at Westminster Magistrates’ Court.
ALSO LEAVING OFFICE: Boris Johnson’s night of the blond knives — the brutal overhaul of his top team — has not just had consequences for the careers of deposed ministers sent to the backbenches telegram data to lick their wounds. For their political appointees, a reshuffle is much more serious — they are made redundant (albeit with a reasonable pay-off, made even more generous by a departing David Cameron). Playbook spoke to more than half a dozen current and former special advisers — known in Westminster as SpAds — about what a reshuffle is like for those behind the scenes, and what might happen next.
Phone goes quiet: The mood among the advisers frantically refreshing their Twitter feeds for news of their fate on Wednesday ranged from “this is brutal” to “this is f***ing awful.” “One day you are in the thick of it and quite literally the next day your phone stops ringing. You have gone from working at 100 mph, which is addictive because of the adrenaline, and then you think what do I do next?” one SpAd, who lost his job in 2016 when Theresa May became prime minister, told Playbook.
Leave with dignity: Many SpAds said they prepared for the possibility of being made redundant. “Even before the reshuffle begun I said goodbye to the press office, cleared up my emails. I didn’t want to be frogmarched out, it is better to leave on your own terms,” one said.