The Sun sends Cole to Washington

Last year Rats in a Sack reported how Harry Cole, the Sun’s political editor, was desperate to desert these shores for Trumpland. With his Tory contacts out of power, and not being groomed by News Corp bosses as management material, Carrie Johnson’s ex-boyfriend was said to be keen on a transatlantic transfer.

Then last month we ruminated on how he had done his American dream no harm by penning a batshit mental piece for his paper about a recent trip to the country in which everyone – waitresses, cab drivers, bellhops, Uncle Tom Cobley and all – couldn’t wait to gush about their worries about the state of Britain upon hearing Cole’s accent.

“Complaints ranged from locking people up for things they post on social media, the near-endless stream of protest hate and bile in our cities every Saturday afternoon to the scarring legacy of a generation of kids mutilated by the NHS at the Tavistock gender clinic,” wrote Cole, shaking his head at the potpourri of issues complete strangers had fretted about unprompted.

Now, finally, “the wantaway striker’s come-and-get-me plea” – as the Currant Bun’s sports hacks would once have put it – has been heard. Cole is being packed off to Washington by Sun bosses after being appointed editor-at-large.

“After covering six PMs, a pandemic, wars and all the political skullduggery of Westminster, it’s a wrench to leave the Lobby after ten years,” says Cole in a News UK press release, neglecting to mention that much of that skullduggery – such as, say, Downing Street hosting raucous parties while the rest of the country had to stay at home by law – The Sun did its very best to play down. He will write a weekly column for the paper as well as host an evening talk show broadcast on YouTube and the firm’s little-watched Talk outlet.

With Cole off to cover his hero Trump Stateside, a considerable gap has opened at the paper for a new political editor, still considered a plum job despite the paper’s waning influence. Current favourites include Ryan Sabey, Cole’s deputy, and Kate Ferguson, political editor for the Sun’s Sunday edition, while the Daily Mail’s Harriet Line might be an option were the paper to look externally.