Knives out for Kit Malthouse

Shots fired. The ‘rule of six’ has divided opinion in Westminster and beyond. While Health Secretary Matt Hancock championed the limit on group gatherings as the safest option – several of his Cabinet colleagues took the view that it was a step too far. 

Not that this has stopped ministers since taking to the airwaves to wax lyrical over the measures. Home Secretary Priti Patel said she would call the police on her neighbours while her minister Kit Malthouse said home-owners should snitch on neighbours. Malthouse’s intervention has proved particularly rattling. Writing in Friday’s Evening Standard, the journalist Petronella Wyatt takes aim at her old acquaintance:

‘Kit “Fatty” Malthouse exhorts us to inform on neighbours if they are breaking the absurd “rule of six”, which even scientists deride. Malthouse, the only man I have ever met who can strut sitting down, is in no danger of suffering from this himself. He doesn’t even have six friends.’

Alas Malthouse dropped out of the 2019 Tory leadership contest so early on that Mr S has no clear evidence on which to calculate his true popularity levels…