Michael Simmons

Is Rishi Sunak stopping the boats? He’d certainly like us to think so. He spent much of yesterday in Dover parading the news revealed on The Spectator data hub last week that small boats crossing the Channel were down a fifth compared with the same time last year. By the end of May, the Ministry of Defence had detected 7,610 migrants crossing the channel in small boats. In the same months last year it was 9,607. A clear success then. But is a 20 per cent reduction really job done? Or is Sunak standing on deck with the mission accomplished banner flying before the war is won? For starters the weather has a lot to do with it. Those at his Dover press conference were quick to point to choppy and windy weather.

Just how does Rishi Sunak intend to grow the economy? It's the second of his five pledges; last week’s Budget was full of Tory talk about the virtues of getting people off benefits and into work. But the data shows a rather different picture: five million are on benefits while mass immigration – now running at record levels – is once again the only major factor expanding the workforce. The OBR envisages this problem continuing, with immigration running at near-record numbers while Brits claim sickness benefit at the rate of about 5,000 a day. An odd and expensive economic model – some data out today puts it into more perspective. The total on out-of-work benefits – 5.1 million or 13 per cent of the workforce – is not a figure the government likes to talk about.

Kate Forbes has taken an early lead in the race to replace Nicola Sturgeon. The Finance Secretary, who’s currently on maternity leave, has emerged in first place in a poll of Scottish voters. The poll for the Scotsman asked 1,004 people who they’d like to see leading the SNP and settling into Bute House. Forbes leads among SNP voters with 18 per cent. Among all voters she’s also the most popular with 14 per cent of the vote. Angus Robertson – who remains the bookies' favourite – was second in the poll with 14 per cent of SNP voters and 9 per cent of the public backing him. John Swinney, the deputy first minister and Sturgeon’s right-hand man, came in third but has already ruled himself out.

So now we know: Scotland will get its new leader on 27 March. The rules that will determine how Sturgeon’s successor – and Scotland’s sixth First Minister – will be chosen, were thrashed out by the party’s National Executive Committee on Thursday night. Nominations are now open and will close a week today. The ballot will then open to members on 13 March followed by a fortnight of voting. The election will take just over five weeks – half the length of the SNP’s last contested election when Alex Salmond returned to power in 2004. Candidates will need to win the backing of 100 members from at least 20 branches in order to make it onto the ballot.

Today is being dubbed 'Walkout Wednesday': thousands of schools are shut as teachers go on strike – and civil servants and lecturers are also on the picket line. Railway staff continue their strike today too and there is little sign of the strike deadlock being broken. We’re losing more working days to industrial action than at any point since the 1980s. A large chunk of industrial action is made up by rail strikes, and the government fears ‘a generation’ of passengers will be put off train travel for good. Might the strikes prove terminal for Britain's railways? The RMT, which is responsible for the latest walkout, is at the forefront of the action. The union is still holding out on a pay offer worth 5 per cent, then 4 per cent over the next two years.