Steerpike

It wouldn’t be a Tory party conference without hundreds of protesters lining the streets. Manchester has not disappointed. From trade unionists, Steve Bray’s die-hard remainers, the Young Communist League, Extinction Rebellion and, of course, Just Stop Oil, anyone with a grievance appears to have made it to the Rainy City. Even Bully XL owners have trudged around Manchester today, chanting “muzzle Rishi, not our dogs!” – although Mr S can gladly report that they’ve left their hounds at home. Beginning their marches an hour late, Mr S isn’t quite sure that the activists managed to capture the attention of the Tory politicians they were denouncing – particularly as most were already safely inside the venue for today’s big speeches.

There’s just over a week to go before what might be the Labour party’s last conference before the general election. But while the mood in the wider party might be one of optimism, it seems that caution is the order of the day on Keir Starmer’s front bench.  Appearing on a panel called ‘Is Labour’s election triumph inevitable’ at the Cliveden Literary Festival, shadow foreign secretary David Lammy revealed that during Starmer’s party leadership campaign in the spring of 2020, he had some words of warning for the future leader. ‘I cautioned Keir not to suggest that Labour could win the election in one cycle,’ he said, ‘He didn’t accept that advice and decided to go for it.’ At least Lammy still managed to bag a place in the shadow cabinet.

It’s safe to say that this hasn’t been GB News’s finest week and there’s no sign of the drama stopping any time soon. First Laurence Fox and Dan Wootton were suspended from the channel for their, er, discussion about political commentator Ava Evans. Now Calvin Robinson has become the third presenter to be disciplined after posting a lengthy defence of Wootton online. Robinson’s defiant post appears to have set off alarm bells at GB News HQ. The Deacon’s fury at his colleague’s suspension was channelled into a 326-word long Twitter rant about the ‘pandering’ of his bosses to the ‘woke mob’. Wootton, he raged ‘brought so many people on board… including the careerist ambitious ones who are currently gunning for his job.

To the Parlimentary Press Gallery dinner, held in the splendour of the National Liberal Club. This event hasn’t been held for four years, with Press Gallery chair Sam Lister joking that ‘Boris Johnson locked the country down’ to avoid attending while Liz Truss resigned the day her invitation to this shindig arrived. Lister gave the opening speech, turning her wit on a series of politicians including Tom Tugendhat whom she quipped had gone from a ‘security minister to a security risk’ in record time. But the highlight of the night was undoubtedly the speech by the Prime Minister. And Rishi Sunak took to the stage with aplomb, contrasting Lister’s rise with that of her counterpart Hugo Gye, the chairman of the lobby.

The GB News row rumbles on, with its enemies seeing the perfect chance to call for its closure. A genuinely indefensible blunder from two of the channel's regulars, Laurence Fox and Dan Wootton, has seen both suspended. But questions are now being asked about the overall culture – and even whether it should be banned entirely. Adam Boulton, former political editor of Sky News, was on Newsnight last night saying that it’s time for GB News to be taken off air, even going so far as to compare the station to Russian state media: I have to say I think the complaints have piled up against GB News. I think there is a delicate and important broadcast ecology in this country.

The Lib Dem conference is still in full swing in Bournemouth and the party's long-suffering activists seem to have something of a spring in their step. After a triumphant local elections and a quartet of by-election victories, the party looks set to double their parliamentary contingent, come next year's contest. Lib Dem aspirations in the Blue Wall were demonstrated by leader Ed Davey's visit to a Winchester farm this morning to pose with various sheep in front of the assembled snappers. Talk about Have I Got Ewe for News... But not all has gone Davey's way. A big battle was waged over a motion to scrap the party's plan to scrap their existing housing target to try and attract new voters in the true-blue Tory shires.

What is Liz Truss's legacy? It's a question that will no doubt entertain future historians. But one thing they will never be able to take away from her is a place in the annals of Lib Dem history. As a former card-carrying member, Truss earned an entry in the party's infamous 'Glee Club' songbook – a collection of tunes sung on the last night of the Lib Dem annual conference. Her 1994 call to abolish the monarchy was subsequently immortalised in a song called 'The week we went to Brighton'.

It’s the first day of conference season and the Liberal Democrats are keen to make the most of it. This year their slogan is ‘For a fair deal’. But is renegotiating the Brexit deal really what they’re all about? Ahead of this weekend’s conference Sir Ed Davey was keen to put such talk to bed, claiming that rejoining the EU was ‘off the table’ and that his party wanted to instead focus on issues of greater concern to the public. Not all of his front bench seem to have got the message though. Speaking on the first day of the party’s annual conference in Bournemouth, the Lib Dem foreign affairs spokesman Layla Moran told a fringe event: ‘We want to rejoin. We want, as part of it, to get back into the single market.

Just when we thought we had seen the last of John Bercow on our screens, the news has broken that the former speaker of the House of Commons is joining the line up of the US version of the hit game show The Traitors.  Currently being filmed in Scotland, the show will see Bercow join the likes of Love Island’s Ekin-Su and a whole host of other reality TV stars to be divvied up into ‘traitors’ and ‘faithfuls’. The traitors will have to kill off the faithfuls one by one to get to the hefty £205,000 cash prize, while the faithfuls do their best to root out the traitors at a nightly interrogation. Mr Steerpike is certain some of Bercow’s former colleagues in Westminster may have ideas about which team they’d like to see him on.