Hello, welcome to Coffee House Shots. I'm James Hill and I'm joined today by Tim Shipman,

the pleasure of The Spectator, and Claire Watson, former Deputy Chief of Staff and the Boris Johnson's number 10,

and the new host of a new podcast called In the Room with Helen McNamara from the Cabinet Office.

Welcome to both of you, and the story we're both discussing today is about Morgan McSweeney's missing phone.

Tim, do you want to talk us through us?

Yes, so Morgan McSweeney lost his phone.

He had it stolen.

Was it lost? Or was it stolen?

Yes. So he reported it stolen in October of last year.

And we are told that has meant it has been impossible to reclaim some of

the messages between Morgan McSweeney and Peter Mandelson. This is newly interesting, of course,

because Parliament has basically demanded the release of those messages. And lo and behold,

it's not possible to get them back. Now, there's a lot of scuttlebutton suspicion doing the rounds

on all of this.

McSweeney and Starmer's political opponents assume that this must be somehow a got-up story

and that McSweeney either didn't lose his phone or chucked it in the river and then reported it lost.

There's suspicion particularly because, as the serving Chief of Staff in Downey Street,

if you lose your phone, it's quite a big deal. And it seems that the Metropolitan Police did absolutely zilch about trying to recover this phone.

As someone who has spent several years tweeting about the uselessness of the Metropolitan Police,

I don't think that should surprise us terribly.

But it is certainly the case that other people who have worked in and around number 10, including people who have contacted me this week who had their phones stolen, say that security in number 10 was a good deal more interested in that than the piester of him in the case with Mr McSweeney.

The story has taken a further step this morning because the prime minister has been out and about saying it's all rather far-fetched to think that there's anything suspicious here.

...