Steerpike

When Rishi Sunak became Prime Minister last October, Joe Biden phoned him to reaffirm the ‘special relationship’. But when the two leaders appeared at a press conference last night to launch the Aukus pact with Australia, Sunak probably wished Biden hadn’t been so chummy. Biden seems to have given the Red Wall, and Sunak’s political opponents, plenty to chew over ‘First of all, I want to welcome him back to California,’ Biden said of Sunak. ‘He’s a Stanford man, and he still has a home here in California. That’s why I’m being very nice to him, maybe he’ll invite me to his home,’ he continued, just in case anyone had missed where this home might be, ‘here in California.’  According to reports, the home in question is a £5.

'Former Prime Ministers' remarked William Gladstone 'are like untethered rafts drifting around harbours – a menace to shipping.' And as the good ship Sunak seeks to avoid the guns of Messers Johnson and Truss, at least the SS Theresa May is posing somewhat less risk to the government's structural integrity. May has largely maintained a dignified silence during Sunak's first six months in office but has today revealed an exciting new development. She's writing a book on 'The Abuse of Power', which is due out in September. According to the press release: As Prime Minister for three years and Home Secretary for six years, Theresa May confronted a series of issues in which the abuse of power led to devastating results...

Day five and the Gary Lineker row shows no sign of abating any time soon. The BBC has gone into meltdown; the Prime Minister has been forced to distance himself. Lineker's show Match of the Day was shortened to a mere 20 minutes without commentary, with his co-stars boycotting the programme in 'solidarity.' Faced with a staff mutiny and a 200,000-strong petition to reinstate Lineker, how on earth does the Beeb's management sort this one out? One possible victim of the row is not Lineker but the BBC chairman Richard Sharp. There is an ongoing KC-led review into his appointment as BBC chairman and whether he failed to properly disclose details of his involvement in the facilitation of an £800,000 loan guarantee for the then PM Boris Johnson.

Today was the penultimate party hustings of the SNP leadership contest, this time with Glasgow party members quizzing the leadership contenders. Did they want to know about what the next leader of the SNP thinks about the constitution perhaps, or the race to save Scotland’s NHS? Not quite. Instead, it appears what really matters to the SNP membership is, erm, the Stone of Destiny, ITV Borders and, naturally, berating England. One member asked at the hustings: ‘We thought we were entitled to a referendum; Westminster said no. We passed the gender recognition [reform bill], ‘no’. Now coming up is a coronation. Do they want our stone? Oh yes. Will they ask us? No, they’ll just take it. If they want it, they’ll have to ask. Our answer will be what?

Oh dear. It seems that the BBC press office has had a nightmare 24 hours, with not one but three blunders in rapid succession involving three of their biggest stars – Fiona Bruce, David Attenborough and Gary Lineker. The Lineker row has been dominating the headlines but it's not the only row consuming the Beeb. On Thursday night, Bruce fronted an episode of Question Time in which the mooted knighthood for Stanley Johnson was referenced. Journalist Yasmin Alibhai-Brown described him as 'a wife beater' prompting her host to explain to the audience that: Stanley Johnson’s wife spoke to a journalist, Tom Bower, and she said Stanley Johnson had broken her nose and she had ended up in hospital as a result. Stanley Johnson has not commented publicly on that.

No red card for Gary Lineker, it seems. The Sun reports this afternoon that the outspoken TV presenter is staying put after comments he made comparing the rhetoric around the government’s new illegal migration policy to 1930s Germany. It appears Lineker has avoided even so much as a slap on the wrist, with a BBC source claiming that: We have spoken to Gary and he won't face any disciplinary action. From our perspective the situations has been resolved now and we want him to get back to what he's best at, which is being a brilliant sports presenter. The Beeb's support seems to have only emboldened Lineker in his attacks on the Tory government.

Good old Alastair Campbell has been out and about today, showing just why he was once such a valued spin doctor. The onetime master of the dark arts has been vexed, nay outraged, over Tory MPs daring to question Gary Lineker's decision to liken the government's rhetoric on asylum seekers 'to that used by Germany in the 30s.' For good measure the BBC star added the legislation proposed was 'immeasurably cruel.' Campbell has been working himself into a self-righteous lather about those pointing out that Lineker is supposed to be bound by the Beeb's impartiality guidelines, firing off endless tweets that suggest the row is a storm 'whipped up by the populist right.