Steerpike

After a fraught few months, you'd have hoped the hard-pressed masters and mandarins of Whitehall could let their hair down with a good old Christmas bush. Unfortunately, in the wake of 'partygate' a wave of cancellations is now sweeping Westminster with No. 10 canning their planned shindig on Wednesday and Rishi Sunak now calling off his Treasury drinks for the lobby on Monday. Mr S hears that further cancellations are in the works, amid fears about the Omicron variant and growing questions about the growing number of secret soirees which went on last year in lockdown. How will our cheese and wine industries cope? The cancellations are all the more curious given, er, the Prime Minister's own advice is for Christmas parties to still go ahead.

With No. 10 in crisis and his party opening up a six point lead in the polls, can anything ruin Keir Starmer's Christmas? Well the Socialist Campaign Group seem to be doing their damnedest, given their propensity for high-profile interventions to remind voters of the collection of cranks still adorning Labour's collection of cranks. The latest leftie lemming to pop out of the woodwork is Diane Abbot, who, since relinquishing the Shadow Home Affairs brief in April 2020, has spent the past eighteen months appearing on Zoom platforms alongside various racists and opponents of the West.

Pity the poor people of Leicester East. Having finally rid themselves of the disgraced Keith Vaz in 2019, the long-standing Labour constituency now finds itself lumbered with convicted criminal Claudia Webbe. Despite being slapped with a suspended jail sentence, Webbe still clings on in the Commons, pending her appeal, after her barrister's pleas for the last judge to 'consider my client's suffering as a black woman' was, er, unsuccessful. If her appeal fails, a by-election will (finally) be triggered. Let's hope next time Labour pick someone who won't threaten others with acid – nor get caught in a Sunday Mirror drugs and escort sting... With all her appearances in court, it's no surprise that Webbe is being accused of neglecting her long-suffering constituents.

Much has written about the Rod-gate Durham drama since Friday night. Whether it's 'literally shaking' students compiling Twitter threads about their shock or breathless write-ups in our paper of record, it appears that a five minute speech from The Spectator's Rod Liddle is all that's necessary to trigger a full-blown free speech row. Angry undergraduates are set to hold a campus protest at Durham later today, with others now demanding content warnings for all after-dinner speakers.  But now, after maintaining a (relative) silence these past five days, the man at the centre of the controversy has decided – in the immortal words of Oprah Winfrey – to speak his truth.

It hasn’t been a great 24 hours for Downing Street. Under fire for its lockdown-busting Christmas party, facing fury over the Afghanistan debacle, surely solace could be found from the fray in the rarefied atmosphere of the House of Lords? Sadly not, for yesterday their noble lordships turned their aristocratic fire on the government’s Animal Welfare (Sentience) Bill. The flagship legislation, which Mr S has covered extensively, is designed to protect helpless creatures and recognise they can feel pain by creating a new super-committee to judge the effects of government policies. Lobsters and octopi are to now be included; ministers forced to do morning media rounds are sadly not.

Away from the shenanigans of Downing Street's Christmas parties, another festive bash was being held last night just down the road in Westminster. Mr S was among those at One Birdcage Walk enjoying the hospitality of the Adam Smith Institute's annual shindig, where Lord Frost enlivened the evening with a stalwart defence of free-market principles against the tide of interventionism. Britain's Brexit supremo raised some eyebrows in No. 10 last week with his comments at the Thatcher Conference on the need to diverge quicker from the 'European social model' adding 'I agree with the Chancellor – our goal must be to lower taxes.

Steerpike has seen many abject appearances before select committees. There was the time Sir Philip Green told Richard Fuller to 'stop staring' at him after BHS went belly-up. There was Russell Brand's cowboy-hatted testimony on drug abuse. There was even the infamous occasion when Rupert Murdoch was attacked by a pie. But few civil servants have given such a pathetic performance as Sir Philip Barton managed today before the Foreign Affairs Select Committee on the loss of Afghanistan. The Foreign Office Permanent Secretary was up before a panel of seething MPs to respond to this morning's revelations about the department's dire response to the collapse of Kabul.

The masters of Durham University have reacted with Olympian swiftness to the hysteria which greeted Rod Liddle’s dinner speech at South College on Friday night. Students professed themselves to be ‘literally shaking’ at The Spectator columnist’s comments on sex and gender issues — poor darlings. The adults in and around campus, meanwhile, were equally eager to vent their sense of horror. The local Labour society insisted that 'Our university doesn’t owe hate a platform’ and the Students’ Union demanding the resignation of the College Principal Tim Luckhurst.

With England and France feuding, Russia mobilising and Brussels incurring the wrath of Rome, it all feels a bit 1530 in Europe at the moment. The latest Renaissance throwback has been the octogenarian Pope Francis coming out swinging against the European Union for its efforts to ban the word 'Christmas' among Brussels bureaucrats.  Other EU suggestions include replacing Christian names such as Mary and John with 'international' names such as Malika and Julio Hand-wringing pen-pushers have told their fellow Eurocrats to swap it instead to 'holiday period' as it could be offensive to non-Christians, as part of a guide on 'inclusive communication.' The document ordered staff to substitute saying 'Christmas time can be stressful' for 'holiday times can be stressful.