Steerpike

So. Farewell then. Dominic Raab. The Justice Secretary might be gone but the debate about office behaviour rumbles on. And, with exquisite timing, Mr S spotted that one government department is doing its own bit for Whitehall workplaces by today publishing details of a £140,000 contract for IT services for a new 'Bullying harassment and discrimination reporting platform' for civil servants. The new service will allow staff to anonymously report incidents and is going to be run by Culture Shift, a company which promises to give 'organisations the insight they need to monitor and prevent bullying and harassment in educational institutions and workplaces.' It claims to enable organisations to take a 'proactive and preventative approach to protecting their culture.

Oh dear. Just when Keir Starmer looked like convincing voters that Labour had changed, along came an unwelcome reminder of the party's not-so-distant Corbynite past. Diane Abbott, the onetime Shadow Home Secretary, has popped up in the Observer letter pages today to offer her (unsolicited) musings on the issue of, er, antisemitism. There's a first for a Labour politician... Abbott took issue with a column written in last week's newspaper headlined 'Racism in Britain is not a black and white issue. It's far more complicated' and wrote to set out her own view: Tomiwa Owolade claims that Irish, Jewish and Traveller people all suffer from 'racism'. They undoubtedly experience prejudice. This is similar to racism and the two words are often used as if they are interchangeable.

Can the BBC ever get it right? Just weeks after the Beeb was embroiled in an impartiality row over the rogue tweets of their star presenter Gary Lineker, another spat over bias has reared its ugly head. In September, the broadcaster hired a new political fact-checker, Oscar Bentley, to comb through political debates in the run up to the next general election. But the Daily Mail has now revealed that Bentley might not quite be the bastion of impartiality one would hope. According to the Mail, he is a ‘lifelong Labour supporter’ who canvassed for disgraced former Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn at the last general election and has in the past regularly taken to bashing Tories on social media.

It seems that not even MPs' offices are exempt from the nation's employment crisis. Ahead of next year's general election, Mr S hears that many bright young things on the Tory side are leaving parliament – with their elected members now finding it difficult to hire suitable replacements. Some quitting the Commons fear a Labour landslide; others suggest it's merely long-serving staff reaching a natural end point after three or four years of service. 'Large amounts of my mates are actively looking' for new jobs, said one Portcullis House veteran, with Tory MPs now 'finding it hard to recruit.

Another day brings another bombshell revelation about Scotland's ruling party. Yesterday morning the SNP treasurer Colin Beattie was arrested by police investigating the party's finances. It now transpires that Beattie has quit as the SNP's national treasurer following his arrest. He also states that he will 'be stepping back from my role on the Public Audit Committee until the police investigation has concluded'. The arrest follows the arrest of Peter Murrell, Nicola Sturgeon’s husband who was previously the party's chief executive, earlier this month. Murrell was released without charge pending further enquiries.

A new week has come around, and it brings yet more turmoil for the SNP. Calls for Nicola Sturgeon to resign as MSP for Glasgow Southside have grown louder after a leaked video showed the former SNP leader angrily warning colleagues about speaking negatively of the party’s finances. Despite her colleagues returning to the Scottish parliament post-recess, Sturgeon’s spokesman confirmed that the former First Minister will not in fact be back in Holyrood this week – ‘to ensure the focus is on the new First Minister’. Nevertheless, Humza Yousaf’s time is still being consumed by desperate attempts to convince the public that nothing is amiss.

Oh dear. It seems that another police chief is making headlines, for all the wrong reasons. Perusing his copy of this week's Spectator, Steerpike was bemused to read in Charles Moore's notes about Wiltshire Police's latest edict. No officer may join the force’s rural crime team if he or she has any link with hunting, even a pre-ban one or one with legal trail-hunting. Wiltshire Police say they are also barring anyone linked with anti-hunt protests. But as Lord Moore argues: 'There is no symmetry here. Hunting is part of a rural way of life. Anti-hunt protests are political/ideological.

There’s more trouble in Scotland’s nationalist paradise. A storm is brewing amongst members of the SNP’s innermost ruling group as it is revealed that party secrets have been kept from its very own National Executive Committee. The resignation of the party's auditors, details on finances and the exodus of party members all came as much as a surprise to the party’s ruling group as they had to the rest of the nation.  But it doesn't stop there. Fresh allegations have sprung from a source deep within the party: an NEC whistleblower described how a group of senior figures including ‘power couple’ Sturgeon and Murrell demanded that the NEC be ‘disbanded’ in order to launch an inquiry meant to save the party from electoral disaster.

Is Humza Yousaf set to repeat his predecessor’s mistakes? He’s certainly not doing much to avert fears: today, his government has confirmed that it will be launching a legal challenge against the UK government's section 35 order that blocked the bill. Shirley-Anne Somerville, the Cabinet secretary for social justice, wrote in response to a parliamentary question: The use of section 35 of the Scotland Act 1998 to stop the legislation proceeding to Royal Assent is an unprecedented challenge to the Scottish parliament’s ability to legislate on clearly devolved matters. To uphold the democratic decision of the parliament, and ensure proper protection of devolution, Scottish Ministers will now lodge a petition for judicial review of the Secretary of State’s decision.