Hardly a miaow for the NHS as ‘catgate’ continues

This is the audience for Andrew Lansley speaking on the NHS as I write.

Not very good. The party members are hugely outnumbered by us journalists combined with lobbyists, corporate visitors etc. The ushers in the hall have been given a very strict edict by the party to let no-one sit in the outer reaches of the hall and to pack the centre seats so it doesn’t look so bad on camera. Sit in a back row and you get barked at persistently until you move.

Off-stage, “catgate” continues.

Theresa May’s team have been circulating the original judgement which the appeal judge upheld. The appeal judge clearly thought the original judge’s mention of a joint purchase of a pet cat was a useful piece of supporting evidence in deciding whether the Bolivian did or didn’t have a serious relationship with his girlfriend.

The fact the two had a pet cat “reinforces my conclusion on the strength and quality of family life,” he said. So that judgement did mention a cat and does look a bit daft. But the relationship with a human being was the matter in law and the cat was supporting evidence of the human relationship.

Read more: FactCheck gets its claws out on Theresa May and ‘catgate’

I think this still puts Ken Clarke ahead but it won’t feel like that when he sees some of tomorrow’s right wing press.

Papers like The Sun have it in for him big time. In days of old they once, many believe, played a major role in removing Dominic Grieve as David Cameron’s Shadow Home Secretary. Some Tory MPs will sympathise. Though one PPS just said to me that Theresa May was at fault, not least for raising the whole business of the human rights act again and raising expectations when it was so clearly not up for grabs because the Lib Dems are adamant it must not go.