Steerpike

Since the election date for next year’s London mayoral election was announced, Sadiq Khan has been putting on a show of confidence that his re-election is in the bag with his supporters pointing to polling that suggests Labour enjoy a 40-point lead in the capital. However, the Ulez expansion – which Keir Starmer blamed on his failure to take Uxbridge in last month's by-election – has certainly put a spring in the step of his Tory mayoral opponent Susan Hall. Now could a fresh nightmare be heading his way? It appears the incumbent Mayor of London might have an unwelcome challenger at next year’s election in the shape of none other than former Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn.

Having previously been known simply as ‘that footy pundit off the telly’, over the past year Gary Neville seems to have been trying to manoeuvre his way into politics. The former Man Utd captain signed up as a Labour member, conducted a cringeworthy Q&A with Keir Starmer at last year’s party conference, and has consistently called for the Tories to be removed from office. But is Neville a true comrade of the workers' movement? Mr S thought he'd do some digging into the right back's past... Qatari hypocrisy Having been a consistent critic of the Qatari government, their human rights' abuses and stance on gay rights, Neville then, er, became a fully paid-up member of Qatari state media by agreeing to be a pundit at the 2022 World Cup for beIN Sports.

Taylor Swift mania has hit Los Angeles this weekend as the best-selling songstress takes her sold out Eras tour to the Sunny State. It means local residents are on high alert that there is a chance they cross paths with Swift. So spare a thought for the young woman who headed to an early morning Taylor Swift-themed spin class only to see security everywhere. In a video on TikTok, she explains that she had the 'biggest heart attack of my life': 'my mind immediately goes "holy sh-- Taylor Swift is about to be riding in my 7am Soul Cycle class"'. Alas, it wasn't to be. Rather than Swift, the 'VIP' in question was none other than... Rishi Sunak. 'Turns out it was the Prime Minister of the UK. Apparently he's a Swiftie,' she explains in the video. https://www.tiktok.

As the earth orbits the sun and leopards avoid changing their spots, so Eddie Izzard is again attempting to become a Labour MP.  This time the comedian and actor, who also goes by the name Suzy, is standing to become the Labour candidate to replace Caroline Lucas in Brighton Pavilion. In 2022, Izzard tried unsuccessfully to become the candidate for Sheffield Central; and in 2016 and 2018, Izzard ran to be on the Labour National Executive Committee, failing on both occasions.  An all-too-slick Twitter video announced Izzard’s candidacy, and Mr S wonders at the cost and production value, considering Izzard has not even been selected as Labour’s candidate. A timetable for Labour’s selection process has not yet been set out.

Dear oh dear. Things haven’t been going well for for the Green party lately and now they’ve just got a whole lot worse. The Green's first UK parliamentarian and former leader of the Scottish Greens Robin Harper has quit the party, announcing that the Greens have ‘lost the plot’. Mr S wonders how long it took him to notice – has he been living under a rock? In a scathing letter written to his successors ‘after lengthy consideration’, the octogenarian let loose on the party he’s been part of for decades.

Well, well, well. After almost three years of Margaret Ferrier’s Covid breaches coming under the spotlight, the SNP MP has finally been ousted from her seat in Rutherglen and Hamilton West. In the end, 11,896 people in her constituency – 14.7 per cent of eligible voters – physically signed the recall petition to eject her, a little over the 10 per cent needed.

It feels as if almost every American presidential election is billed as the ‘nastiest in US history’. Steerpike, contrarian that he is, would like to reject this lazy media characterisation. Politics is always nasty and American politics has its own particular viciousness. When it comes to the likely Trump vs Biden rematch in 2024, however, all bets on civility are truly off. It was deeply unpleasant in 2020 and will be even worse this time. Here’s Donald Trump in Pennsylvania calling his rival, the President of the United States, a ‘dumb son of a b****’. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bgWxXinCaVw Not satisfied with dissing Biden, Trump also called Ron DeSantis a ‘son of a b****’ – though he rather tellingly left out the word ‘dumb’.

It never stops for Nigel 'Rocky' Farage. Having seen off the chief executive of both NatWest and Coutts in successive days, he faces another cancel culture battle: this time involving the media group that employs him. Not GB News, at which he remains the golden boy, thanks to the interest garnered over his bank accounts. But rather Reach, which owns Express Online, for which he is writing a column on the upcoming American presidential race. It seems that not all within Reach have taken too kindly to their latest signing: hardly surprising perhaps, given the company owns the Daily Mirror too. A group called Reach Culture has now dissolved themselves in protest at Farage’s appointment as a columnist at one of their publications.

Labour frontbencher David Lammy was today confronted by a furious voter on his LBC show about the Ulez extension. It’s been causing a row over the past week, since the Tories unexpectedly held onto Uxbridge and South Ruislip in last week’s by-election. The caller said: To be honest with you, I’ve had my wife in tears on the phone now. This has done us. It’s finished. We have £150 to £200 a month to spare. Some months, on a good month. That’s now going to go on a tax. I really weren’t gonna vote anymore because obviously the Tories and how much they lie… I was actually going to give Mr Starmer a go with the support  backing them now. They lost my vote immediately. I urge everyone to vote Tory now… Watch the full clip below.

Troublemaking isn’t confined these days to the SNP’s Westminster group. It seems that nationalists north of the border have got the bug for insurrection too. Fergus Ewing, SNP MSP for Inverness and Nairn, has revealed that there is a ‘toxic atmosphere amongst the SNP group in Holyrood’ and that he doesn’t think the Nats stand a chance of winning another indyref just now thanks to the party's ‘extremist’ policies. The son of late nationalist legend Winnie Ewing told the Holyrood Sources podcast that things are not all hunky dory in Edinburgh:  The atmosphere in Holyrood is not particularly happy now within the SNP group. There’s many people in the cabinet and the leadership that haven’t uttered a word to me or vice versa for well over a year.