Steerpike

Priti Patel is not a fan of big tech. The Home Secretary has spent much of her three years in office decrying the giants of Silicon Valley, frequently railing against the likes of Facebook, TikTok and Twitter for various failings. She's ordered them to remove posts promoting illegal Channel crossings, 'live up to their moral duty' by tackling online child abuse and attacked them for publishing 'appalling hate' on their platforms. Her department has also mooted banning online anonymity and proposed an advertising campaign which criticises Facebook for daring to use end-to-end encryption for its messages. Given all the dastardly things which occur on their platforms, just who exactly is funding such firms?

Whoops! Cripes! The government is in another mess. The cry goes out: send for Gove. Like the elegant Jeeves to Boris's Bertie Wooster, he answers his master's desperate call, ready to extricate him from another self-inflicted mess. Now the PM's latest troubles are not aunts but Ukrainians and the many thousands now fleeing their country.  The Home Office are predictably ineffective so it's once more unto the breach for the oleaginous Aberdonian, the man with more jobs than George Osborne. Levelling up, saving the Union, intergovernmental relations and now processing refugees: is there anything the Gover can't do?

It's been a tough week for poor John Bercow. The release of the report by the Parliamentary Commissioner for Standards into his Speakership on Tuesday saw 21 counts of bullying being upheld against him. Since then there have been calls for universities to strip him of his academic posts, while Commons bosses have delivered the ultimate insult: removing his name from the parliamentary gym spin room. Talk about purging the last remnants of a hated former regime. And Steerpike can reveal that Bercow has also now quit as a trustee of Holland Park school, known as 'the socialist Eton'. His term was due to end in November 2024.

It's been a difficult year for the BBC. Whether it's Emily Maitlis or Peter Crouch, Andrew Marr or Simon McCoy, a whole host of stars have departed the Beeb as the corporation battles to remain relevant in the twentieth first-century. Budget cuts and increased competition mean that journalists with more than 1,000 years of experience have taken redundancy, retired or accepted big money deals from commercial rivals over the past two years. The mass exits have prompted fears of a 'brain drain' of talent with insiders expressing concerns about the difficulties of filling the smorgasbord of top posts which are currently vacant. Now a Freedom of Information request by Mr S has revealed the cost of all these departures to the corporation's hard-pressed coffers.

Fresh from apologising for the persecution of witches in the sixteenth century, Nicola Sturgeon has now jumped on to the next big challenge. You'd have thought the energy, cost-of-living and health crises might keep the First Minister occupied, not to mention the various issues around Scotland's schools, transport links and criminal justice system.  Not a bit of it. For the nationalist-in-chief has found a new cause to involve herself in: international relations, an area specifically reserved for Westminster. Despite having no powers, mandate or army, Sturgeon today decided to take a swipe at Nato, using an interview with ITV to argue the defence bloc should review the idea of a 'no-fly zone' over Ukraine on a 'day to day basis.

Happy International Women's Day! To mark this auspicious occasion, the Radio 4 programme Woman's Hour today hosted a conversation between presenter Emma Barnett, former Home Secretary Amber Rudd and the Labour shadow minister for women and equalities, Anneliese Dodds.  Unfortunately, amid all the amicable chatter about why Dodds' post does not have a full-time dedicated Cabinet minister, Barnett decided to raise a difficult question for any right-on Labour MP. Referencing the query of one listener called Jill, Barnett asked the Labour chair if a future government led by Keir Starmer would legislate to define what a woman actually is.

It's groundhog day up in Scotland as once more the SNP have found a reason to suggest why their desperately-needed, long-overdue second independence referendum... might have to be delayed again. For, despite a pliant press, a captive state and 15 years in power, the tartan nationalists are still unable to breach the magic figure of 50 per cent support for independence.  Having demanded a second referendum barely after the dust had settled on the first one, the SNP don't seem so keen on holding it, given the lack of any sizeable shift in their favour. In light of Ian Blackford's latest intervention, below are just five reasons given by the SNP since 2014 on why they have not yet held their long-awaited second referendum.

It appears David Lammy isn't the only MP building a lucrative media career. Turning on GB News yesterday, Mr S enjoyed seeing not one but two Tory backbenchers presenting a show together: Esther McVey and her husband Philip Davies. The pair are very much the Beyonce and Jay Z of the Commons, having enjoyed parliamentary freebies together for a number of years.  And now the couple seem to be making the most publicly out of their private lives by hosting a programme on which they regularly invite their fellow Conservative MPs. Yesterday's offering for instance boasted not one but two of McVey's colleagues, with both Treasury minister John Glen and veteran Sir Christopher Chope being interviewed for segments on the show. Two Tory MPs interviewing a third?

Oh Sadiq Khan. The mayor of London was swept to office back in 2016 on a wave of Labour optimism about their plans for the great metropolis. One of his main pledges was for 'zero days of strikes' as 'every day there’s a strike, it causes huge misery and inconvenience to Londoners.' Khan claimed, prior to his election, that walkouts were 'a sign of failure' and that 'as mayor, what I’d do is roll up my sleeves and make sure that I’m talking to everyone who runs public transport to make sure there are zero days of strikes.' Fast forward to 2022 and a very different picture emerges.