Steerpike

Sadiq Khan had a jolly old time this weekend. First, the £152,000-a-year mayor got to watch Liverpool beat Norwich for free at Anfield on Saturday. And then, hours later, he received another complimentary ticket to watch the boxing at the Manchester Arena, where his friend and namesake Amir Khan was battered by northerner Kell Brook.  But while all eyes were on the ring, Mr S couldn't help but notice in the excitement that the London mayor had removed his face mask to watch the fight, despite being in a crowd of some 20,000 roaring boxing fans. Ticket-sellers had previously told those applying that 'face masks must be worn throughout the performance' – a subject on which Khan has been positively evangelical.

Picket lines, striking teachers egged on by a left-wing trade union, and children missing out on their education. No, not a chapter from a history of the Winter of Discontent, but rather scenes playing out on the streets of Britain in February 2022. It seems that the bad old days of the inner-city comprehensives in the 1970s are back but with a catch: now they’re playing out at some of the most elite girls’ schools in the country. For Mr S hears that all is not well among the hard-pressed parents of children at the fee-paying Girls’ Day School Trust (GDST), a network of 23 independent schools in England and Wales. It educates about 20,000 girls aged from 3 to 18 in London, Birkenhead, Norwich, Newcastle and elsewhere.

'The job of the Ministry of Agriculture is to look after farmers. The job of the Foreign Office is to look after foreigners.' Or so jibed Norman Tebbit about Whitehall's grandest department. In recent months Mr S has covered the antics of the Foreign Office (FCDO) with a cynical eye, as ministers and mandarins have done everything in their power not to offend President Xi Jinping and his lackeys in Beijing. Whether it's foot-dragging on a boycott of the Winter Olympics or quietly trying to reopen trade talks with China, there's every sign that in the corridors of power, the spirit of the 'golden era' never truly ended. Take poor Amanda Milling, who covers the Asia brief.

Cheer up Boris: at least there's one MP having a worse time than you. It's not been a great February so far for Craig Whittaker. The Tory MP for Calder Valley was just about the only member of the government to lose his job as a Whip last week in Boris Johnson's mini-reshuffle. The Prime Minister has so many enemies at the moment that he's reluctant to banish anyone to the backbenches but after nearly five years of loyal service, Whittaker departed as part of an overhaul of the Whips' Office which saw Chris Heaton-Harris become chief and Chris Pincher named his deputy. In a statement, Whittaker told local press that he was leaving for 'personal reasons' and that he remained '100 per cent supportive of the government.

If James Dornan did not exist, Mr Steerpike would surely invent him, for the SNP MSP for Glasgow Cathcart is so fantastically absurd that he supplies endless (and endlessly entertaining) copy. Dornan is in the news again, this time for pronouncing that the BBC’s Sarah Smith imagined the abuse and misogyny she experienced while covering Scottish politics. During her tenure as the Beeb’s Scotland Editor, Smith was turned into a hate figure by cybernats, the digital foot soldiers of Scottish nationalism who target opposition politicians, journalists and anyone else out of step with Nicola Sturgeon’s inclusive, progressive Scotland.

Happy register of interests' day! Commons sleazebusters marked Valentines' day yesterday by quietly releasing an updated list of MPs and what they've been declaring. There's plenty of fun stuff there: Carlton plotter Will Wragg got a handy £5,000 donation from his gentleman's club of choice while both Lib Dem leader Ed Davey and Labour MP Grahame Morris were embarrassingly forced to make belated entries on various undeclared interests. Holly Lynch got perhaps the most intriguing donation: a £20,000 bequest to advance 'the campaigns or careers of young socialist women.

Stormont, the home of Northern Ireland's assembly, has never exactly been a place associated with social liberalism. So Steerpike was surprised to find that the Ulster parliament – where the Bible-bashing Ian Paisley held court for so long – has spent thousands of pounds on controversial LGBT+ charity Stonewall.  Freedom of Information requests by Mr S found that the Assembly paid £7,500 to be members of the organisation's 'diversity champions programme' between 2018 and 2021, with the Northern Ireland executive spending a further £1,440 for Stonewall seminars on leadership, allyship and promoting mental health since the beginning of 2020.