The Londoner: Climate champion’s bumpy take-off

Labour’s new shadow climate justice minister Danielle Rowley has spent nearly £3,000 in expenses on flights in the last year alone, as well as £1,000 for her staff.

Rowley was appointed to the newly created role last Friday, and immediately criticised the Government for not having “introduced a single practical measure that will help the UK to lower its emissions” since the adoption of the 2050 net zero-emissions target.

Information on the Independent Parliamentary Standards Authority website reveals that between April and June last year, Rowley claimed £2,759.05 on air-travel expenses.

During the same period, she claimed £1,061.12 for her staff. In all, since her election to the seat of Midlothian in 2017, Rowley has spent more than £5,000 on flights that were then claimed back on expenses.

Other Scottish MPs do claim similar expenses for money spent on flights back to their constituencies.

Rowley’s parliamentary neighbour, Christine Jardine, the MP for Edinburgh West, has claimed £10,000 on flights in the same period.

A Labour spokesperson told The Londoner that Rowley “takes the train between her Midlothian constituency and Westminster when she can” but blamed the need for flights on the “unpredictable nature of Parliament and the high cost and unreliability of the rail network”.

Rowley’s role was created by Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn partly in response to Extinction Rebellion protests. She will liaise with campaigners, convene meetings and use them to discuss Labour’s green policies.

At the time of her announcement, Rowley said: “We need to kickstart a green industrial revolution in the UK informed by diverse voices from both within and outside the climate movement.”

The MP’s constituency is just south of Edinburgh, which is just under four and a half hours from London by rail. The Labour spokesperson, though, argued that it was “unacceptable that travelling by train in the UK can cost many times more than a flight”.

Khan-do diplomacy

The leader of Westminster council, Nickie Aiken, held a private meeting with the deputy mayor of Beijing, Cheng Hong, yesterday. “I talked to him a lot about democracy,” Aiken told The Londoner at London First’s business lunch at Westminster Abbey yesterday. In reference to China’s detainment of hundreds of thousands of Uighur Muslims in Xinjiang, Aiken told Cheng: “I’m absolutely delighted and proud that we have a practising Muslim as our Mayor of London.

“I think he thought I was probably more important than I am.”

The Westminster powerhouse undersells herself.

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Elle editor Farrah Storr made headlines last year when she said she didn’t have “anyone I would call a close friend”, though she admitted to “a friendship opening on the horizon”. So what news? “She’s a friend now!” Storr told The Londoner at the Elle List party. “But she has to chase me.”

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Claire Fox, the Brexit Party MEP, was “shocked” to discover “a really startling, murky, dirty secret right in the heart of the European Parliament”. The Moral Maze panellist told a Boisdale dinner last night that what amazed her were the “smoking rooms on every floor”. “How sensible, how civilised, how humane,” she said, before stressing: “I haven’t gone native.”

At last, a New Yorker Sadiq can welcome

Michael Bloomberg, the businessman and former New York mayor, struck a self-deprecating note at a pre-Serpentine summer party last night, telling the audience at the Sackler Gallery: “This may surprise you but Vanity Fair once named me one of the 25 best-dressed New Yorkers of the year. It was a very slow year.” He has a fan in the Mayor of London. “I don’t say this about every businessman-turned-politician from New York,” Sadiq Khan joked, “Mike, you are always welcome in London.”

Heartfelt thoughts from Ms Shulman

Alexandra Shulman spoke on a British Heart Foundation panel last night at Mortimer House in Fitzrovia and made a typically forthright intervention.
The “Bias and Biology” panel discussed how women are less likely to be diagnosed with heart disease as they are routinely not given the same standard of care as men. Shulman wondered: “Maybe the focus should be on how we can make change, instead of being concerned about a male bias.”
Meanwhile, on Oxford Street at Selfridges, Olivier Rousteing, the creative director of Balmain, welcomed guests to celebrate the opening of the fashion house’s pop-up sneaker store. Guests included Tigerlily Taylor, the model and daughter of Queen drummer Roger Taylor; pharmaceutical student-turned-fashion blogger Tamara Kalinic and jazz singer Poppy Ajudha.
Ajudha was name-checked earlier this year in Barack Obama’s annual best-of list that he posts on Facebook.

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Hard Brexiteers Steve Baker and Mark Francois posed for a birthday selfie with incorrigible anti-Brexit protester Steve Bray. Bray has made a name for himself demonstrating outside Parliament. Baker tells The Londoner: “I wished him a happy birthday and expressed the hope that a hangover would give us all a quieter day. It was all perfectly jolly.” Peace in our time?

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Jeremy Hunt showed his lighter side in a Twitter Q&A last night. Asked about whether journalists deliberately mispronounce his surname, he replied: “I think they’re all Jeremy Hunts.”
Former Labour leadership hopeful Owen Smith sounds a sour note following reports that union boss Len McCluskey was influential in persuading Jeremy Corbyn not to back a second referendum: “Len says ‘No’, apparently. When did he become leader of the Labour Party?”

Quote of the day

‘We aren’t going to get back in the closet’

Angela Eagle tells MPs that parents protesting LGBT education are wrong