Steerpike

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.

Sir Keir Starmer has tried to make great play recently of his reforming credentials, pledging earlier this month to abolish the House of Lords. So it was some irony then that Starmer's own nominee Tom Watson entered that very chamber yesterday as perhaps one of the most controversial new life peers created in recent years. Watson used his maiden speech in the Upper House to apologise to the widow of the late Lord Brittan, whose home was raided by police after claims that he was involved in the confected Westminster paedophile controversy – a cause which Watson eagerly promoted. However, while such an apology is no doubt appreciated by some, others unfairly embroiled in the scandal feel aggrieved at being overlooked.

Ding, ding, ding! In the blue corner, it's Joy Morrissey, government whip and the Tory member for Beaconsfield. And, er, in the other blue corner, it's Simon Clarke, fellow Conservative MP and representative for Middlesbrough South and East Cleveland. The cause of today's metaphorical bout? Planning and the thorny issue of where to build much-needed new homes. Conservative MPs have often faced accusations of talking a good game on such issues, only to then turn around and block developments when they occur in or around their own local patch. Recent examples could include Maria Miller and Theresa Villiers, both of whom backed an amendment this month to scrap housing targets and the presumption in favour of development.

It’s six days until the King’s Speech but tonight it was Keir Starmer’s to give it a go. The Labour leader hosted the great and the good of the lobby tonight at a Christmas knees-up to celebrate the end of term and multiple Prime Ministers. Starmer regaled HM press corps with his musings on events.  Of Matt Hancock’s I’m a Celebrity… appearance, Starmer reflected that it was ‘a rare sight of him eating bollocks rather than talking them.’ Kwasi Kwarteng became the ‘second shortest serving Chancellor ever’ – an achievement all the more remarkable ‘when you consider that Nadhim tried to resign on day two.’ But it was the World Cup that attracted most of the Leader of the Opposition’s attention.

The World Cup is drawing towards its close today and one benefit means we will get to hear less from Gary Neville, the left-wing right-back who has never met a camera he didn't like. You would think perhaps that a man like Neville – a multi-millionaire working for the Qatari state broadcaster – might be wary about entering the political fray, given his public humiliation on Have I Got News For You last month. Not a bit of it. The card-carrying Labour member, who appeared on stage with Keir Starmer at this year's party conference, instead opted to hijack the World Cup final today to muse on the situation here in Britain.

It's less than a week since the Conservative Democratic Organisation (CDO) launched and already organisers are optimistic about its success. The new group was born out of the Conservative Post's 'Boris ballot' movement in October to restore the former Prime Minister to office via a petition which claimed to boast more than 10,000 Conservative members. Having failed in that effort, supporters David Campbell Bannerman and Lord Cruddas are instead hoping to have more luck with their latest endeavour: a group to give the Tory grassroots more of a say in the running of their party. And early signs are good for the group, which launched last Sunday. Organisers say they have received an impressive 715 applications to serve on the executive of local branches.

Oh dear. Labour have had a pretty good run of late, castigating the Tory government at every turn. But given the chance to set out her alternative vision on Sky News this morning, Labour chair Anneliese Dodds could only squirm when pressed as to how her party would be handling the strikes. Under repeated questioning from Anna Jones, Dodds – a former Shadow Chancellor to boot – desperately claimed that she was not 'going to on live television pluck a figure out of the air.' Presumably she thought Sky had asked her on to discuss political ephemera? Her answer was simply the bland insistence that 'we would negotiate' but not, er, actually explain Labour's red lines going in to such a negotiation. By Steerpike's count, Dodds ducked the question no less than four times.

Trains, hospitals and schools – there are few aspects of British life left untouched by the winter of discontent. And now Steerpike hears rumblings of industrial discontent at the heart of British democracy itself: in the Houses of Parliament itself. Long-suffering staffers have had to endure months of vermin-infested kitchens, crumbling masonry and asbestos aplenty. Now power cuts over the past two days in the One Parliament Street building have pushed some of those working on the parliamentary estate to the brink. The GMB branch for Members’ staff is now gathering signatures for a letter to the Serjeant at Arms, outlining their urgent concerns.

Oh dear. It seems that Matt Hancock has been called out on his Covid record, again. In his newly-published 'Pandemic Diaries,' the former Health Secretary appears to pin the blame on the National Archives in Kew for the late publication of restrictions introducing the 'rule of six' on 13 September 2020. Hancock suggested that the new rules – which were made public just 15 minutes before they were due to take effect – were nearly derailed thanks to the Archives closing early that day. He wrote in his memoir that: As far as I was aware, everything was in place, until I received a message from the office saying there was an issue with the National Archives… The issue really was in Kew. It turns out that until they receive a new law, it isn't legal – and at the stroke of 4 p.