Steerpike

It's all kicking off in Makerfield, where Andy Burnham has romped to victory in the by-election. Burnham, Labour’s newest MP – and the PM-in-waiting – was graceful enough to shake the hand of his Reform opponent Robert Kenyon after the result was announced in the early hours. But elsewhere at the count in Wigan, there was no love lost between Reform and Labour types. Reform’s Sarah Pochin and Labour peer Baroness Thangam Debbonaire clashed during a testy interview live on Sky News. Debbonaire attempted to take Pochin to task over a video the Reform MP had posted about domestic abuse during the World Cup.

For the sake of women’s safety we need England to keep winning 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁥󠁮󠁧󠁿 pic.twitter.com/Art8B5gzaf— Sarah Pochin MP (@SarahForRuncorn) June 18, 2026 For most England fans watching the World Cup game against Croatia last night, it was the score which was at the forefront of their minds. Not so though for Reform MP Sarah Pochin, who had a unique take on England’s win. In a bizarre social media clip posted on X, she said that ‘on the occasions that England lose their football matches, the incidences of domestic violence go through the roof. So, boys, keep on winning.’ In response to the post, Labour’s education minister, Bridget Phillipson wrote: ‘Men should not beat up women. Full stop. No excuses.

Violence, shooting and driving fast cars are not usually the first things that spring to mind when Whitehall talks about the ‘lived experience’ of the British public. Yet Policy Lab, an ‘experimental’ cross-government unit based at the Department for Education, appears to think otherwise. It has been very busy encouraging our esteemed civil servants to spend time at work playing Grand Theft Auto (GTA), an 18-rated video game, to learn about the public's 'hopes and dreams'. Expectations of Whitehall’s pen-pushers are rarely high. But the so-called Policy Lab takes civil service grifting to a new level. The unit actually pays officials to ‘spend time with participants in videogames they played regularly’ to ‘experience the world’.

In the battle for the right, all eyes are on who moves where. A handful of Tory MPs made the jump to Reform, prior the 7 May deadline imposed by Nigel Farage. Now it is the turn of backroom talent, as both parties bid to prove which of them had the more credible offer. Under James Orr, Reform’s Head of Policy, the party has made a series of statement signings including James Graham of the Prosperity Institute and Sam Ashworth-Hayes from the Telegraph. But now Steerpike hears tell of another marquee hire. Karl Williams, the Research Director of the Centre for Policy Studies (CPS), will be joining Orr’s team shortly. Williams is best known in ‘wonk world’ for his work on the so-called ‘Boriswave’ of mass migration that has occurred since 2020.

https://twitter.com/Tony_Diver/status/2066533745482404217 Poor Sir Keir Starmer simply cannot catch a break. Last week, what remained of his authority suffered another hammer blow after John Healey quit as Defence Secretary. He was quickly followed out of the door by the colonel-turned-Labour defence minister Al Carns. One Luke Pollard, the Minister for Defence Readiness and Industry, however, stayed on. While Downing Street would have been somewhat relieved that the entire team had not turned on the Prime Minister, Pollard made clear today that his continuing in the job is hardly reason for No. 10 to pop the champagne. In the Commons, he confessed that he is only still in post because Healey asked him to stay.

Not even the resignation of a respected defence secretary will stop one Sir Keir Starmer from ploughing ahead with his tumultuous premiership. Despite John Healey’s blistering warning that the Prime Minister is incapable of keeping the country safe, Sir Keir today vowed to take the fight to Andy Burnham should he triumph – as currently expected – in the Makerfield by-election. The Prime Minister insisted to the BBC that battling on without the confidence of more than half his party is 'not about personal vanity'. He argued: It's not about stubbornness. It's out of a very deep sense of duty. I was elected to serve this country notwithstanding the difficult circumstances, that is what I am doing.

People will say almost anything to win power. Sir Keir Starmer’s rise is a case in point. In 2020, he won the Labour leadership by presenting himself as a candidate who would preserve much of the Corbyn-era policy agenda. Once in charge, many of those promises were diluted, abandoned, or quietly reinterpreted. By 2024, he had done something similar on a national scale. Now, his rival for the throne has taken a leaf out of his playbook. Despite a Labour leadership contest not even having formally begun, the Andy Burnham seems to have no qualms about making constant breakneck turns on policies he advocated just months ago. The Manchester Mayor is also already spitting out swathes of new policies which he thinks will get Labour MPs – and the country – behind him.

https://twitter.com/tomhfh/status/2064331571981594814?s=46 The United Kingdom was yesterday hit by yet another horrific act of violence, allegedly at the hands of a ‘refugee’. At moments of such profound distress, the country naturally demands answers. The public expects its leaders to explain how the immigration system can facilitate the entry of individuals from regions of the world ravaged by war, where women are often treated as second-class citizens. Yesterday in the Commons, the unionist MP for North Antrim, Jim Allister, pressed Northern Ireland Secretary Hilary Benn on the matter of people from ‘alien cultures’ being granted the right to live in the UK.

With the weather improving, small boat arrivals look set to increase in the coming weeks. So what better time for Zia Yusuf, Reform's Home Affairs spokesman, to take a trip to the States to learn how the Trump administration has stopped illegal migration there? Yusuf is in Washington this week for meetings with congressmen, Senators and officials on behalf of Nigel Farage. So much for the relationship between the MAGA movement and Reform cooling eh? Yusuf has been among the most ardent enthusiasts in Farage's party for a plan to mirror the Trump administration's push for mass deportations. So he must therefore be delighted to be meeting members of MAGA – the Make America Great Again movement – as part of his bid to learn from Tom Homan, Trump's 'Border Czar'.