ANNA MIKHAILOVA: Rishi Sunak turns to his vampire squid pals again for help

Rishi Sunak keeps the chumocracy chugging along with the appointment of yet another of his former Goldman Sachs colleagues – as if with blithe ignorance of public concerns about the investment bank’s role in the 2007 global financial crisis which resulted in the loss of so many jobs, homes and savings.

Last year, Sunak chose Richard Sharp, his former boss at Goldman Sachs, as a Treasury adviser to help with the Covid-19 rescue package. Sharp has now been made the new BBC chairman – allowing Sunak to bring in another Goldman alumnus, Chris Grigg, as a ‘senior adviser’.

Grigg spent more than 20 years at the bank, rising to be partner, and got out just before the crash with bulging pockets.

Rishi Sunak keeps the chumocracy chugging along with the appointment of yet another of his former Goldman Sachs colleagues

He got a CBE in the latest honours list for holding down his job at the helm of property giant British Land and will soon be helping Sunak design the new Infrastructure Bank.

Curiously, the official Government biogs of the Chancellor and Grigg make no mention of their time at the investment bank that was once likened to a ‘great vampire squid’.

No wonder Bercow is a Trump expert

Donald Trump’s incitement of the assault on US democracy that left five dead in Washington has drawn a range of comments from friends and foes this side of the pond. While Nigel Farage called the storming of Capitol Hill ‘wrong’, he described the rioting mob merely as ‘protesters’. Quite a contrast to his tweets on a peaceful BLM march in London, which Farage branded as ‘terrifying’ and a ‘paramilitary-style force’ from a protest group he later likened to the Taliban.

Meanwhile, John Bercow called Trump ‘narcissistic, obsessed with himself, utterly disrespectful of anybody who holds an opinion that differs from his own, and inclined ultimately to turn on everybody’.

The former Commons Speaker is an expert on all those things.

Meanwhile, John Bercow called Trump ‘narcissistic, obsessed with himself, utterly disrespectful of anybody who holds an opinion that differs from his own, and inclined ultimately to turn on everybody’

The 34 Tory MPs who held out to the bitter end against Theresa May’s Brexit deal bigged themselves up as the Spartans, after the ancient warriors who never showed any weakness or fear in combat. So eyebrows were raised when one Spartan ‘hard man’ showed his bark was worse than his bite and cried like a baby during a recent Zoom call with Tory Eurosceptic grandee Sir Bill Cash – when these fearless Brexiteers caved in and supported the 11th-hour trade deal. Tears of relief, I’m told.

Congratulations to former Education Minister Anne Milton on her two new jobs with companies involved in, er, education. The paid roles are with City and Guilds Group and training specialist Pearson, both of which she encountered while a Minister.

The firms have been awarded Government contracts – although Milton, who quit the Government in summer 2019 and stepped down as an MP soon after, has given assurances that she had no personal involvement in awarding them.

The former Skills and Apprenticeships Minister’s gig with Pearson will involve helping staff ‘understand the Government’s ambitions and aspirations for apprenticeships’.

Congrats also to my favourite appointments watchdog Acoba (aka the Advisers for Cashing-In and Brazen Avarice), which, despite telling Milton it was concerned ‘there is a risk you would offer an unfair advantage’ to both firms, waved through her new jobs regardless.