Steerpike

A new year brings with it fresh headaches for Rishi Sunak. Chris Skidmore, a former energy minister, has announced he will stand down as an MP in protest at plans to issue more oil and gas licences. Parliament is expected to vote on Monday on the government's flagship bill to guarantee annual licensing rounds in the North Sea. Tory strategists had hoped that the legislation would exploit Labour divisions on green issues. But it seems to have prompted the opposite effect, with Skidmore taking the very rare step of not just resigning the party whip but quitting his seat in protest – triggering a contest in his soon-to-be-abolished Kingswood seat. Skidmore did not find another seat, so he was anyway leaving parliament. He has now bolted early.

Sir Keir Starmer was up this morning in Bristol, giving a big speech on the importance of transparency. The Tories, he gravely intoned, had wrecked Britain, with their relentless sleaze and cronyism. So it must have been, er, sub-optimal then for the Labour leader to have his big speech blown off course when Jim Pickard of the Financial Times threw him a curveball in the Q&A. Back in June, the paper published the contents of an internal JP Morgan report which laid bare the extent of Jeffrey Epstein’s contact with Peter Mandelson that describes repeated meetings between the disgraced financier and the politician he knew as 'Petie'.

President Gay, we hardly knew thee. Six months ago, the political scientist was appointed the head of Harvard University to much fanfare: hailed as a trailblazer, Gay was the first black woman to hold such a role. Now, after weeks of damning headlines, she has a new claim to fame: she is the shortest-serving president in four centuries of Harvard history. Girl boss! Gay's downfall came after a disastrous appearance last month at a congressional hearing on campus antisemitism. Throughout the grilling, she and her counterparts at the University of Pennsylvania and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology repeatedly sidestepped the question of whether calls for the genocide of Jews violate the school's conduct rules.

Ding, ding, ding! It seems that James Cleverly took Downing Street’s instructions to get in some much-needed R&R over the holidays very seriously indeed. The Home Secretary was raring to go on this morning’s broadcast round, getting into several spats with the host of Radio 4’s Today programme, Mishal Husain. Cleverly was on air to discuss the Home Office’s claim that the asylum backlog had been cleared. He argued that ‘every single [legacy claim] has been processed’ but said it was ‘impossible to say’ how long it would take to clear the remaining cases, asserting that the aim is to get the overall number of applications coming down.

Sadiq Khan was hoping to project a message of ‘unity to the world’ with this year’s New Year’s Eve fireworks in London, which of course included the customary genuflections to the NHS, Windrush and inclusivity. But for all the highfalutin spiel about London’s place in the world, the mayor seemed rather less comfortable talking about the situation in the capital itself, when he was interviewed by Sky News shortly before the celebrations began. Asked first about recent figures that showed that knife crime was rising at the fastest rate in five years in London, and knife-point robberies rising by more than a third, Khan touted his ‘public health’ approach to knife crime, before quickly turning to blame national policies and the lack of public investment in services.

When Boris Johnson lost power, he didn't just blame Dominic Cummings. He thought he was victim of a wider plot to replace him with Rishi Sunak who, he suspected, was in cahoots with his former adviser. 'I heard that Cummings has said he started to plot to get rid of me in January 2020,' he told Nadine Dorries for her book, The Plot. 'The plot was always to get Rishi in. I just couldn’t see it at the time. It’s like this Manchurian candidate, their stooge.' Right in time for the paperback edition of The Plot, Dominic Cummings has now confirmed that he was approached by Sunak about making a comeback in a 'secret deal'.

These days parliament seems less like an episode of House of Cards and more like a Spooks reboot. Whether it's Chinese spies or cyber-attacks, the good men and women who work in the Palace of Westminster have rarely felt more conscious of their safety – and that's not to mention the collapsing roof and crumbling masonry. And with fears growing over foreign interference in next year's general election, Tom Tugendhat, the Security Minister, has now written to MPs outlining plans for a cyber-security shake-up. Among the measures include a new security advice and support service with 'hands-on support from security-cleared technical consultants' working for parliament.

Ah, the true meaning of Christmas: an excellent chance for some photo opportunities. And while the Tory tech bros of No. 10 have been goofing around for their Home Alone remake, Labour kept it simple. Sir Keir posted a picture of himself and his wife enjoying, in his words, a 'traditional Christmas drink with neighbours in the local' – every inch the normal beer-drinking bloke. Get out the sandwiches and he'll be ready for the unions in No. 10... Yet Mr S wonders for how much longer Sir Keir's local is going to survive under the ever-blundering regime of Sadiq Khan's City Hall? As every Westminster obsessive knows, Starmer's favourite pub is The Pineapple in Kentish Town – a site 'woven into the fabric of the community since it was built in 1868.

A new year brings the same old headaches for hapless Humza Yousaf. There's plenty of problems awaiting the in-tray of Scotland's flailing First Minister from drug deaths and school standards to Michael Matheson's iPad data. But perhaps no policy area sums up his party's failures in office than the ongoing farce over CalMac ferries. The state-owned ferry network has been plagued by issues in recent years, with extensive delays and costs ballooning in the building of two ships at the Scottish Government-owned Ferguson Marine shipyard.

A month after 'Stockton-gate', the Home Secretary is in the headlines again over reports of another verbal indiscretion. James Cleverly has tonight apologised for comments made at a Downing Street reception about spiking his wife's drink with a date rape drug. Speaking to female reporters at the No. 10 lobby drinks on Monday, Cleverly said that 'a little bit of Rohypnol in her drink every night' was 'not really illegal if it's only a little bit', according to the Sunday Mirror. The remarks came on the same day that the Home Office announced plans to crack down on spiking.

It may be the the last First Minister’s Questions before Christmas, but no one in Scottish Parliament is in the festive spirit. After the SNP announced a winter budget that would make even Scrooge seem upbeat, it’s no surprise that hapless Humza got a grilling today. Douglas Ross appeared to be enjoying himself, with the Scottish Tory leader mocking a recent claim made by an SNP cabinet minister that ‘world leaders were lining up’ to get advice from the Scottish government. With 2023 being the year of the motorhome jokes, Ross continued mischievously: Now, it got me wondering: who is this that’s been calling for their advice? Has Justin Trudeau been on the phone looking for a camper van?

Congratulations to the SNP, which has today given new meaning to the phrase ‘slow and steady wins the race’. Members of hapless Humza’s government have announced today that they will complete dualling of Scotland’s ‘most dangerous road’ by 2035 – a decade later than first planned and a rate of construction that works out at, er, four miles a year. A perfect analogy of Scotland’s progress under the SNP… So far there have been 121 deaths on the treacherous road since 2009, two years after Alex Salmond promised to fix the death trap. Transport Secretary Mairi McAllan assured the Scottish Parliament today that the upgrade would be finished within the original £3 million budget ‘when adjusted for inflation’.

Merry Christmas, Rishi Sunak. With parliament rising for recess, some in No. 10 might have been hoping to put their feet up, now that the PM's Liaison Committee grilling is out of the way. But tonight an unwelcome gift has been dropped at Sunak's feet: his party will shortly be facing a by-election in the Northamptonshire seat of Wellingborough. The reason? Another Tory MP accused of behaving badly. Back in October, Peter Bone was suspended from the Commons for six weeks for committing ‘many varied acts of bullying and one act of sexual misconduct’ against a member of his staff way back in 2012 and 2013. The suspension of more than ten days triggered a recall petition, which his Wellingborough constituents have only been too keen to sign.