The best thing about the Evening Standard going to print at lunchtime is that we can be first to a story. The worst thing is that we can get that story wrong. On Monday, our splash headline about the Prime Minister and her Brexit deal was ‘Outnumbered. Outflanked. Out of time’. I thought we’d called it right. On Tuesday, I woke up to the headlines ‘May claims victory’ and wondered. Then Geoffrey Cox spoke and sank her premiership. Later that day he told the Commons it was highly unlikely David Cameron would ever have made him his attorney general. Geoffrey, you’re right.
As this is The Spectator, we should talk up the benefits of Brexit. I’ve found one. I am back in touch with Mark Francois. Mark was a key member of my shadow Treasury team when I was shadow chancellor — and I’ve always liked him even if, now he’s part of the ERG, we don’t always see eye to eye. I asked him last week whether he was going to blink. He replied ‘no’. A few days later, he got into a staring match with Will Self on live TV. True to his word, Mark literally didn’t blink. And he didn’t blink this week either.
Have the journalists finally welcomed me as one of their own? Last Thursday I was asked to give the annual Hugh Cudlipp Lecture. I followed in the footsteps of a distinguished roll-call of editors: Paul Dacre, Andrew Marr… and Piers Morgan. Most began with their journey from local cub reporter via the night desk to the editor’s chair. Mine, I explained to the audience, has been a little different. Before the Standard, the only publication I’d edited was a student newspaper called Isis.
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