Steerpike

Oh dear. It seems that the most illiberal party in Great Britain is at it again. In the nationwide haste to condemn the comedian Jimmy Carr for his remarks about the Gypsy, Roma and Traveller community in his Netflix special, an elected councillor from (who else?) the SNP has called for prosecutions. Not just for Carr himself, mind you; Julie McKenzie, who sits on Argyll and Bute council, wants the many members of Carr's audience prosecuted too for 'applauding' the remarks.  The show, called His Dark Material, was released on Christmas Day but received widespread attention last Friday after a clip was posted and shared online.

The end of Covid has brought with it the long-overdue restoration of liberties. And few know that better than thirsty MPs and their staff on the parliamentary estate, with the reopening last week of the famous parliament's Sports and Social bar. On the night in question, Mr S was one of those piling into the legislative watering holes and was the first to report Labour backbencher Neil Coyle's 'expletive-laiden tirade' at Tory MP Craig Williams. It now transpires that following a complaint, Coyle has now been temporarily banned from the estate's bars – quite the feat to achieve on the first night of normalcy. Speaker Lindsay Hoyle has now been dragged into the debate about MPs' drinking habits, having been forced to defend Strangers on Radio 5 Live this morning.

If Boris Johnson thought his new No. 10 hires would be less high-profile than their predecessors, he might want to think again. Not content with taking a side-swipe at Dominic Cummings on Twitter, it appears that Guto Harri decided to do an interview with the Welsh media prior to taking up his post as Downing Street director of communications. Ignoring the convention that advisers stay out of the limelight, Harri regaled Golwg 360 with anecdotes about his appointment.

It's a quiet day in the Commons today as MPs mostly return to their constituencies for their weekly surgeries. But not all backbenchers have chosen to do so: Matt Vickers, the MP for Stockton South, is among those today debating plans to introduce fixed penalty notices for animal cruelty.  New boy Vickers used the occasion to raise some eyebrows in the House, telling members to titters that 'one of my best friends is a sassy little bitch called Karen.' He quickly added that: 'she's a pomeranian chihuahua or pommy-huahua, a very small dog with a very big personality.' Cue laughs all round. Unfortunately in responding to the debate, Defra minister Victoria Prentis slipped up when referencing Vickers' comments.

Labour has been making much hay out of the government's £8.7 billion spend on personal protective equipment (PPE), much of it bought at the height of the Covid pandemic. The shadow Treasury minister Pat McFadden claimed the figure would be 'galling to hard-working households' while his colleagues have made much of the government's VIP lane to secure kit that was in desperately short supply throughout much of 2020 and 2021.  Mr S abhors waste as much as the next man. But it's worth asking as to what Labour's own alternatives would have been if they were running the country when millions of items were suddenly required for frontline NHS staff.

Mass resignations. Backbenchers demanding blood. Frontbenchers distancing themselves. It's all gone a bit JG Ballard over at No. 10 as Boris Johnson seeks to prevent his premiership being scuppered by partygate. Fortunately though, the much-maligned Whips' Office has come up with a cunning plan: a co-ordinated MP Twitter storm, eulogising the surprise resignation of five No. 10 aides as part of a long-term Johnsonian plan. Brilliant! For while the resignations of Jack Doyle, Martin Reynolds and Dan Rosenfield were long-expected, those of Munira Mirza and Elena Narozanski were not and can hardly be construed as such.

Oh dear. It's been another awful afternoon for Boris Johnson. First, Munira Mirza, the head of his No. 10 policy unit, resigned over Johnson's claims about Sir Keir Starmer's involvement in the Jimmy Savile case. And now, Jack Doyle, his long-suffering director of communications, has just handed in his notice after two torrid months dealing with the fall out of partygate. Doyle joined No. 10 as the PM's press secretary in 2020 from the Daily Mail and has served as comms chief since taking over from James Slack in April 2021. He leaves the role after a mere 10 months in post, having told friends he always planned to leave after two years.

London politicians are no strangers to seeing fireworks. But this year's annual New Year's Eve shindig was a somewhat more muted affair than usual, after mayor Sadiq Khan ordered the last-minute cancellation of events in central London in response to a surge in the Omicron variant, despite the NYE celebrations being, er, almost entirely outdoors.  Those who wished to see the fireworks instead had to make do with watching the BBC's coverage at home, featuring a dreadful, trite opening monologue over an army of drones spelling out the letters 'NHS'.

Ian Blackford has been making the most of current Tory difficulties, railing against the corrosion of public trust on Monday caused by partygate. But is the SNP Westminster leader really best placed to talk? Mr S has already pointed out his party's own lamentable record on inquiries and civil servants up at Holyrood. And now it seems the nationalists are happy to indulge in outright lies as to the future of Scottish pensioners in a post-Scexit nation. For speaking to the Scotland's Choice podcast in December, Blackford was asked what would happen to Scotland's state pension if the country voted for independence. He replied: Absolutely nothing.