Steerpike

Sex, drugs and Nazi costumes: Harry's memoir certainly had it all. And Fleet Street has gone to town on the revelations in the book, dedicating acres of space to rural romps behind Windsor pubs and two dozen dead Taliban fighters. Unfortunately all that coverage means poor old Sir Keir's long-awaited big speech has been knocked out of the headlines. In vain, did Mr S scan the front pages of the papers today, searching for any sniff of Starmer's musings. The Express and Sun – two papers whose readers are being targeted by Labour – didn’t deign to mention it until page 10. The Telegraph and the Times both put their write-ups on page 12. But the Mail takes the gong for not mentioning it until page 22, thanks to its mammoth 17-page report on Harry’s ‘truth bombs.

It’s safe to say that most Conservative MPs will want to forget about 2022: three Prime Ministers, four Chancellors and nose-diving polls to boot. But for one MP at least, it wasn't all bad. The Tories’ fortunes may have taken a drubbing, but unlike her party, Theresa May had a pretty successful year. Accounts published today show that in the year up until March 2022, the former PM’s eponymous company declared more than £1,186,000 in net assets – some £338,000 up on the previous twelve months. It’s all thanks to the Maidenhead MP's success on the speaking circuit, with her speeches regularly commanding six-figure sums. While her successors in No.

It’s Rishi Sunak’s big day today. All of Westminster is eagerly awaiting his first major speech since taking office in October. The Prime Minister is expected to set out his plans this afternoon to encourage pupils to study maths until the age of 18. But ahead of Sunak’s address, the hoary issue of Channel 4 privatisation has reared its head again, ruining No. 10’s carefully planned ‘grid’ in the process. Lewis Goodall of LBC has managed to get hold of a letter to Sunak from Culture Secretary Michelle Donelan. It outlines her recommendation against privatising Channel 4, concluding that ‘pursuing a sale at this point is not the right decision and there are better ways to secure C4C’s sustainability and that of the independent production sector.

It's not been the best few years for Sino-British relations, what with Huawei, Hong Kong and the whole Covid thing. So it was no surprise when, last month, Tower Hamlets council voted to block China's new 'super-embassy,' with councillors citing security fears and the concerns of local residents. The borough of Tower Hamlets is more than 38 per cent Muslim: many constituents were outraged by the ongoing atrocities by the Chinese Communist Party against Uyghur Muslims. The local authority's decision has been greeted with delight by many Sinosceptics – but not by some in the Foreign Office.

And you thought we'd seen the last of them in 2022. The new year kicks off with some old score-settling: for next week will see the publication of Prince Harry's pithily-titled memoir Spare (or Going Spare, quips one royal insider). As the title suggests, the book is expected to focus on the fraternal frictions between the runaway royal and his brother William. Other topics covered include Harry's hatred of the press (quelle surprise) and his reflections on Diana's death. And, in a delicious irony, Harry will be forced to give multiple media interviews to promote the book. Sadly, he has ducked the chance for a no-holds-barred, sit-down grilling with one of Britain's popular papers like the Sun or the Mail on Sunday.

Four Chancellors, three Prime Ministers, two monarchs – one hell of a year. We said that it would be difficult to top the Covid craziness of 2021: we were wrong. Partygate, Pinchergate, porngate, beergate, queuegate – the greatest hits kept on coming as Boris Johnson was washed away in a sea of sleaze and scandal. Next up was Liz Truss's 49-day interregnum, an inglorious experiment that did more to damage the cause of free markets than 100 years of Marxist dogma. And now, finally, we have Rishi Sunak, a living monument to social mobility as the UK's first Asian premier, and more importantly, its first Wykehamist Prime Minister since 1834. Truly, what an underdog. It wasn't all just Tory psycho-drama of course.

Boxing Day: a time for gifts, shopping and fox hunting – traditionally on horse back, unless you're Jolyon Maugham KC. These days of course, the actual hunt is nothing more than trail hunting, with hounds following a scent-based trail rather than live animals. But for some in Keir Starmer's new-fangled Labour party, even that goes too far. Jim McMahon, the baby-faced Shadow Environment Secretary, clearly smells an opportunity here. He is reported in the Guardian (where else?) as suggesting that trail hunting is little more than a 'smokescreen' for illegal activity and a loophole of the 2004 Hunting Act, which banned hunting wild mammals with dogs in England and Wales.

Happy Christmas Gillian Keegan. It's not been the easiest of weeks for the Education Secretary. She has faced media criticism for her comments about teachers' salaries and for wearing a £10,000 Rolex while urging public sector pay restraint. And now things have got even worse for the Chichester MP: she has had her Twitter account hacked on Christmas Day. The unfortunate minister has been locked out of her account, which has begun earnestly espousing the merits of 'dogecoin'. Dozens of tweets from Keegan's Twitter profile have been posted in the past few hours, urging followers of Elon Musk to sign up to an external website promising 'a special giveaway for all our fans and the crypto community.' 'It's gonna be awesome,' promises the bot posting in Keegan's name.

Many institutions were left counting the cost of Liz Truss and Kwasi Kwarteng’s disastrous mini-Budget. And nowhere more so, it seems, than on Horse Guards Road, where those much-loathed guardians of Treasury orthodoxy were forced to work overtime to deal with the resulting market fallout.  Staff earned an extra £89,771 for their work. Kerching! New figures, released in response to a parliamentary question by Lib Dem MP Sarah Olney, reveal that Treasury staff overtime almost doubled after September’s ‘fiscal event’. As officials battled to cope with the resulting market chaos in the weeks that followed, they clocked up more than 1,500 extra hours in October than in the same month last year.