Steerpike

Big news from the media world. Rupert Murdoch is stepping down as Chairman of Fox and News Corp as of November, with his son Lachlan succeeding him as sole chair of both. Murdoch will assume the title of Chairman Emeritus of each company, after seven decades in the print and broadcast industries. The Sun king, aged 92, wrote in a note to employees that: Our companies are in robust health, as am I. We have every reason to be optimistic about the coming years – I certainly am, and plan to be here to participate in them. But the battle for the freedom of speech and, ultimately, the freedom of thought, has never been more intense.

So there we have it. Rishi Sunak's big announcement this afternoon was, er, a not entirely unreasonable five-year delay in the ban on petrol cars and gas boilers. Snap polling suggests it has gone down well with the public, who back the measure by 50 to 34 per cent. But judging from some of the more extreme reactions on Twitter/X, you would think the Prime Minister's decision to bring the UK into line with the EU on a 2035 ban for internal combustion engines amounted to a massacre of the firstborn. Below are five of the more excitable responses to Sunak's announcement today... 'Totally evil' For calm and reasoned moderation, we can always depend on that bastion of common sense, Jolyon Maugham KC. His reaction to the PM's shift in policy?

The Russell Brand revelations have prompted much soul-searching in recent days from hand-wringing hacks fretting about the norms of the noughties. Leading the charge today is Marina Hyde, the toast of centrist dads everywhere. She has written in the Guardian about her angst concerning the infamous ‘Sachsgate’ episode of Brand's career. Back in October 2008, Brand and his Radio 2 show co-host Jonathan Ross phoned Andrew Sachs – Manuel from Fawlty Towers – and left lewd messages on his voice machine, boasting about Brand's past sexual relationship with Sachs’ granddaughter, Georgina Baillie. Battle lines were drawn. Charles Moore was so appalled at this that he said he refused to pay his TV license until Brand had been fired.

With the polls pointing to a Tory thrashing, how many of the 2019 Red Wallers will win their seats next time? One who isn't hanging around to find out is Dehenna Davison, the 30-year-old MP for Bishop Auckland. She announced back in November that she was standing down from parliament and today she has also declared that she is quitting her post as a junior minister for Levelling Up. In her resignation letter, Davison said it was 'impossible' to stay in the job while battling chronic migraines and that she wants to spend more time on constituency work. She now intends to focus her efforts on campaigning for one punch assault victims; her late father died after a single punch in a Sheffield pub.

If only more politicians were like Rory Stewart. That is pretty much the gist of his book Politics on the Edge. While Stewart is the man called into politics to serve the people, the same isn’t true of his colleagues. Stewart’s memoir has a short list of ‘goodies’; namely, himself. But there is a long list of ‘baddies’ who, by Stewart’s account, have brought British politics into disrepute. Mr S has read Stewart’s book so you don’t have to – and here are seven of the worst people on Rory’s naughty list: George Osborne: There’s no love lost between Stewart and Osborne. The former chancellor, who is now doing his best to single handedly solve the labour market crisis, is painted as a cynical Cameron stooge who can’t be trusted. Mr S is shocked!

The Labour party is on a charm offensive – not with Brits, but with our European cousins over the water. Keir Starmer has unveiled plans to drop the Rwanda deportation programme and cosy back up to Brussels in the hope of striking a new asylum deal. But it seems Labour’s plans to present themselves as the party who will kiss and make up with the EU following Brexit might be much grander still. Taking to the airwaves, Labour shadow foreign secretary David Lammy lined up to take a pop at the Tories and woo the EU all in one fell swoop. ‘There are two visions of Britain’, he said, speaking to Nish Kumar and Coco Khan on their Pod Save the UK podcast.

Ding ding! Over the river at City Hall things got heated this morning with London Mayor Sadiq Khan forced to apologise for labelling a Tory rival ‘thick’. Khan was being grilled over the expanded Ulez zone during Mayor’s Question Time, with Conservative London Assembly member Peter Fortune trying repeatedly to pin Khan down on when reports on the scheme’s expanded zone might be published. Frustrated by the Mayor’s refusal to give a straight answer, Fortune continued to probe Khan and said: ‘You know, you can be a bit slippy. You’re very good at this!’ After a bit of back and forth, the Mayor shot back, claiming his exchange with Fortune was ‘like being back at sixth form’.

So. Farewell then. Tobias Ellwood. For more than three years, the Bournemouth East has run the Defence Select Committee with the tact of Alan Partridge and the foresight of Michael Fish. But today his luck finally ran out after committing a gaffe too far. Ellwood's now-infamous Taliban video proved too much even for some of his fellow long-suffering Tories on the panel. Mr S first broke the news back in July that Ellwood's colleagues joined forces with Labour MPs to table an unprecedented motion of no confidence. And this afternoon the former minister finally fell upon his sword, resigning rather than facing the ignominy of being the first elected select committee chair ever to be defeated in such a vote.