Steerpike

Welcome back to Westminster, David Cameron. The return of the former PM to frontline politics has prompted a deluge of stories, mostly concerning the business links he built up in his post-premiership career. One theme that keeps cropping up is China – hardly surprising, given that Cameron is now charged with running British foreign policy. Indeed, today's Sunday Times reports that Lord Cameron helped to secure up to $3 billion in investment for a controversial project run by a sanctioned Chinese company and launched by President Xi. He was paid to visit Dubai and Abu Dhabi and lobby potential investors on behalf of Port City Colombo, a development in the Sri Lankan capital that critics fear could become a Chinese military base.

It turns out that theme of this week's Rishuffle really was 'Back to the Future'. For David Cameron, now returned from political exile, has opted for his title a place that recalls old scandals past. The former Tory leader will be introduced on Monday in the House of Lords as 'Baron Cameron of Chipping Norton', according to the Writ of Summons, which was published earlier today. Back in the early 2010s, Cameron's close links to well-heeled members of the 'Chipping Norton set' like Elisabeth Murdoch and Rebekah Brooks came under scrutiny as part of the Leveson Inquiry. One commentator described members of the set as 'an incestuous collection of louche, affluent, power-hungry and amoral Londoners' while another proclaimed that "Chipping Norton remains a state of mind.

Another day, another tech-related scandal for the SNP. Health secretary Michael Matheson has come under fire for running up a whopping £11,000 bill on his iPad in roaming charges — and initially being prepared to let the taxpayer pick up the bill. Today he gave a lengthy speech explaining himself to the Scottish parliament. He repeatedly choked back tears as he fought to save his career... He told MSPs that ‘the simple truth’ is that his teenage sons had used his parliamentary device to stream football matches — a fact Matheson claims he was only made aware of by his wife last Thursday evening.

Blue-on-blue hits different when it comes from an older vintage. It seems at least one Tory grandee didn't think much of Suella Braverman's incendiary departure letter to Rishi Sunak yesterday. Michael Howard, who famously served in the Home Office from 1993 to 1997, today hits out at his successor, writing an article for today's Daily Telegraph, headlined 'Suella Braverman is guilty of shameful insubordination'. Ouch. The onetime Tory leader writes that her 'insubordination' was intolerable and 'the government is better off without her.

Another day, another financial catastrophe for the SNP. This time it concerns the recent Rutherglen by-election, which saw the nationalists lose the Westminster seat to Labour in a humiliating defeat. But the by-election wasn’t the only embarrassing loss facing the Nats: their party bank balance took a hit too. It transpires that the SNP spent many thousands of pounds more on their campaign than their competitors. Talk about adding insult to injury… First Minister Humza Yousaf’s party spent £96,000 on their failed by-election campaign, which amounted to a staggering £14,000 more than Scottish Labour. 'What were they spending their money on?' laughed one Labour canvasser. 'They were nowhere to be seen!

And so the backlash begins. On Monday evening Andrea Jenkyns MP submitted a letter of no confidence in her ‘Machiavellian’ Prime Minister. It comes at the end of Rishi Sunak’s reshuffle, which saw then-Home Secretary Suella Braverman sacked and, startlingly, former Prime Minister David Cameron return to government. Will the drama never end? Jenkyns’s letter slammed Sunak for sacking Braverman, with Boris Johnson's former education minister raging that ‘enough is enough’. The MP continued in a rather, er, rambling fashion:  If it wasn’t bad enough that we have a party leader that the party members rejected, the polls demonstrate that the public reject him, and I am in full agreement. It is time for Rishi Sunak to go. ...

Remembrance Sunday traditionally brings with it a pause in political hostilities but not for Nadine Dorries. The former Culture Secretary was out on Laura Kuenssberg's show this morning, three days on from the release of her long-awaited book on the supposed 'plot' to bring down Boris Johnson in which Michael Gove is cast as one of the central villains. And following the bizarre scenes yesterday in which Gove was mobbed by pro-Palestinian demonstrators, Dorries showed little sympathy with her onetime cabinet colleague: ND: "But the point on Michael Gove in that, I've got to raise it, what was Michael Gove doing in the middle of Victoria Station on a day when every other sensible politician would not want to make the police's job any harder and would keep away. I mean was he drunk?

Rarely has a protest had so much hype before it has even happened. But today’s pro-Palestinian march had something for everyone. Sadiq Khan has pointed the finger of blame at Suella Braverman over the attempts by right wing protesters to ambush pro-Palestine supporters. Meanwhile, the chants of ‘from the river to the sea’ have led watchers to question whether this was really a march for peace after all. And now a government minister has been thrown into the mix. Footage is doing the rounds on social media of Michael Gove, the levelling up secretary, being mobbed by pro-Palestinian protesters at Victoria station this afternoon. Gove appears to have got caught up in the march, rather than having planned to be there.