Steerpike

Today it was the turn of the Vote Leave gang to appear before the Covid Inquiry. And while Lee Cain, Boris Johnson's onetime director of comms, gave a fairly sober appearance this morning, the arrival of Dominic Cummings produced the expectant headlines. Much of Cummings' evidence today had first been revealed two-and-a-half years ago during his mammoth nine hour session before a special parliamentary select committee. But there were fresh messages and tense exchanges for the attendant hacks to chew over and fill tomorrow's newspapers. Below are four flashpoints from today's Covid Inquiry evidence session. X-rated language One of the first questions was for Cummings to explain his texts, published this morning, that branded Johnson's cabinet 'fuck pigs,' 'morons' and 'cunts.

The mystery of the missing WhatsApps gets murkier. The Scottish Sunday Mail revealed yesterday that Nicola Sturgeon ‘manually’ deleted WhatsApp messages from during the pandemic; her successor Humza Yousaf was one of the government figures who was reported as claiming that the relevant message data no longer exists. The First Minister denies this, however. ‘I’ve kept WhatsApp messages and fully intend to hand them over,’ Yousaf clarified today. The media debate now centres around whether the Scottish Government had a policy on social media messaging in place — and when exactly the messages of senior figures were deleted. Yousaf has today shed light on the first of these questions.

Another one bites the dust. In the latest blow to afflict the hapless Humza Yousaf, his onetime leadership rival Ash Regan has spectacularly defected to Alex Salmond’s Alba party at their annual conference. The Spectator pondered back in February whether Ash Regan was Alex Salmond in disguise. And now she appears to be his heir apparent… Salmond’s speech set the stage perfectly for Regan, a onetime SNP minister. Reminding his members that ‘there are many fine nationalists and many fellow Scots’ within the SNP, he told his party that ‘recruits from the SNP’ were needed if Alba wants to see success. Returning back to the podium after a standing ovation, he welcomed the party’s ‘latest recruit’.

It’s an unlikely face off: the First Minister of Scotland Humza Yousaf against Twitter/X chief Elon Musk. The pair are currently engaged in an online spat after Musk labelled Yousaf a ‘racist’. There’s never a dull moment with him at least…  The row came about last night after Musk saw a clip of a parliamentary speech Yousaf made two years ago. Speaking just after the murder of George Floyd in the US, the then Justice Secretary remarked that the top jobs in Scotland were all occupied by (horror of horrors) white people. Since making those comments, critics have used the clip to label Yousaf as a bigot — while the FM’s allies defend Yousaf’s speech as being about the need for diversity.

What comes around, goes around. The SNP government has never been slow in condemning the Tories for a lack of transparency in the ongoing UK Covid Inquiry. So it was to Steerpike’s amusement then that Humza Yousaf and his Scottish government are now facing criticism for not handing their key messages over to that same probe. Talk about being hoist by your own petard… This morning Jamie Dawson KC, the legal counsel to the inquiry, said that the Scottish government had been asked to provide ‘all communications related to key decisions made during the pandemic’, including informal messages on WhatsApp, but that ‘no messages’ had been handed over. So much for open government.

Oh dear. The world's wokest media outlet is at it again. When they're not moralising over artists or misattributing quotes, there's nothing more the Guardian enjoys then a ritual round of Israel-bashing. A vintage example has been offered up today on its website. Barely a fortnight after more than 1,400 Israelis were butchered by Hamas terrorists, it has published an article claiming that Israel is misusing the history of the Holocaust. According to Israeli academic Raz Segal, President Biden was wrong to reference the historic suffering of the Jews in his response to the attack of 7/10.

Communication is everything in politics, as Labour's overactive press office knows all too well. Earlier this month, Keir Starmer did an interview on LBC with Nick Ferrari in which the latter asked whether 'A siege is appropriate? Cutting off power? Cutting off water?' in Gaza. Starmer replied that 'I think that Israel does have that right. It is an ongoing situation. Obviously everything should be done within international law, but I don’t want to step away from the core principles that Israel has right to defend herself.' Cue much fury within the Labour party about Starmer justifying Israel’s water and electricity blockade of Gaza. His spokesman has since claimed that the comment was in response to a previous question on Israel’s right to defend itself.

Oh dear. It seems that another major broadcaster has slipped up in their coverage of Israel and Palestine. This time it is ITV News, which this week featured in a segment ‘a British Palestinian woman living in London' called Latifa Abouchakra. She was invited on to talk about the Islamophobic abuse she has received in recent weeks, explaining how: I’ve been called a terrorist, I’ve been asked to go back home, I’ve had people in their cars making threatening gestures… it makes me feel as a Muslim woman in this country, that no matter how hard I work, no matter how good I can be, it will never be enough because appearently Mulims and Palestinians are inherently terrorists according to the system here, according to the narrative of the media here.

It’s a tough old time for Rishi Sunak right now. Twenty points behind in the polls, he faces by-election defeats everywhere he looks as well as having to grapple with the ongoing unrest in the Middle East. But as he bids to turn it all around, it seems that the Prime Minister’s task has now got even more difficult – with his top senior civil servant taking time off. Politico today reports that Sunak's Cabinet Secretary is expected to be gone for ‘a number of weeks’ on medical leave. Given the absence is expected to be relatively short (ministers are due to be briefed by the Prime Minister this week) there is unlikely to be a single stand in.