Steerpike

Boris Johnson has just got up in the Commons to announce Britain's response to the ongoing Ukraine crisis. Vladimir Putin last night ordered troops into two breakaway regions of eastern Ukraine run by Moscow-backed separatists, prompting fears that the balloon is about to go up. There are a lot of grim faces in Parliament today as MPs meet to ponder the future of the region. Gulp. Johnson told the House that he was announcing sanctions against five Russian banks – Rossiya, IS Bank, General Bank, Promsvyazbank and the Black Sea Bank – and three Russian high net-worth individuals. While many across Parliament want the PM to go further, it's by no means the worst response to the ongoing situation in the Baltic.

The BBC seem to be having some difficulties filling their top job. Laura Kuenssberg is off as the corporation's political editor after nearly seven years in the post, prompting a bun fight for the most high-profile job in British broadcasting. Yet it seems many of the would-be candidates have other ideas. First Mr S revealed that the deadline for applicants had been extended by a fortnight. And now he can tell his readers that in doing that the Corporation opened it up to outsiders too, despite the job originally being advertised as an internal appointment only. The decision to widen the net was likely prompted by a number of BBC stars ruling themselves out of the competition despite a prospective salary north of £250,000.

Few people in Westminster have a good word to say about the Theresa May years. But for those who served at the heart of the former PM's doomed administration, life now seems to be pretty sweet. Take Sir Robbie Gibb, May's director of communications, who now runs his own firm, RPG Consultancy.  The company published its accounts this week and it seems the man tasked with selling May's Brexit deal is doing better at selling himself, with his firm's assets jumping from £142,000 in 2020 to £292,000 in 2021 – a surge in capital and reserves from £79,000 to £228,000. Kerching!

'Never let a good crisis go to waste' said Churchill. And it seems the SNP have taken that maxim to heart, judging by the alacrity with which they've sought to exploit the current rumblings over Ukraine. Alyn Smith, the party's foreign affairs spokesperson, was straight out there in a fuel-guzzling jet at the beginning of the month, accompanied by several party cronies who smelt an opportunity in the east. None of them have any role in UK government foreign policy whatsoever. Smith, a man who has never met a camera he didn't like, duly clipped himself standing solemn in front of the country's foreign ministry, gravely intoning about the ongoing crisis – as if the poor Ukrainians hadn't suffered enough already.

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.

It's been a tough time for Boris and Carrie recently, so what better else than a night on the town? The Prime Minister has grown used to living off a diet of humble pie, so why not make a change and try some fine cuisine instead? For one of Steerpike's spies spotted on Thursday that the guest book of the much-loved India Club in Covent Garden had a new and intriguing message. The restaurant itself has a rich political history, boasting Lady Mountbatten and Prime Minister Nehru among its founding members some 50 years ago. But now, dotted amongst the various bits of feedback in its records is a heart-adorned missive from one Carrie Johnson. It reads simply: 'Thank you darlings. Brilliant as always. Boris loved the dips.

Parliament is notoriously strapped for cash, so why are thousands of pounds being spent on unreturned IT equipment? Mr S has done some digging and Commons bosses have now written off a decent sum on outstanding kit loaned to MPs who either stood down or lost their seat at the 2019 general election. Items which cost the taxpayer more than £5,400 have been written off with iPads, laptops, monitors and a desktop among the equipment which Parliament has failed to retrieve from former members. And that's not all, for Freedom of Information requests seen by Steerpike show which MPs have grabbed which kit.

It looks like the New York Times is at it again. In recent years, America's least-reliable news source has developed a strange view of Britain — or at least since the Brexit vote in 2016. In the NYT’s world, the UK is a desolate place, where locals huddle round bin fires on the streets of London, gnawing on legs of mutton and cavorting in swamps during the summer, ever fearful of the despot Prime Minister, Boris Johnson. Just last month the paper's international edition ran a front-page comment piece claiming the country would 'sleepwalk into tyranny' thanks to our 'ever more spiteful nationalism.'  Now though it seems the Brit-bashing has a new outlet: attacking this country's greatest living writer.

Undeterred by the SNP's agonies, the Scottish Greens have now decided to jump into the row about post-Scexit pensions. The indy-backing party, which props up Nicola Sturgeon's government at Holyrood, has come out claiming that nervy Scots need not worry about their pensions being paid if the country voters for secession, according to one of its leading lights at the Scottish parliament. A not-so magnificent seven currently take the party whip up in Edinburgh; among them is Ross Greer, the charisma vacuum best known for hoping for the death of the-then critically ill Margaret Thatcher, for calling Churchill 'a white supremacist mass murderer and declaring that 'nothing would thrill me more than for Buckingham Palace to burn to the ground.