Steerpike

There are few events Steerpike enjoys more than Westminster dog of the year. The competition returned today – post-Brexit and post-Covid – for the first time since 2018, with dozens of MPs entering their pooches. Hosted by the Kennel Club and Dogs Trust, it aims to raise awareness of canine-related issues and offer parliamentarians a chance to compete for the prize of top dog in SW1. This year's event though was, understandably, overshadowed by the killing of Sir David Amess, a life-long dog lover and long-standing supporter of the awards. He entered his French bulldog Vivienne into this year's competition just weeks before his death.

With the Pope out, Greta on strike and even the Queen unwell, COP26 is short of much in the way of international glam. So now desperate apparatchiks at the United Nations have come up with their latest ingenious wheeze: creating a 15-foot CGI animated dinosaur to front its apocalyptic warnings about humanity's looming extinction. The two minute clip features a (presumably) blood-thirsty tyrannosaurus taking to the podium at the UN General Assembly to deliver a banal speech lecturing humanity on its shortcomings, somehow restraining itself from devouring the surrounding smorgasbord of plenipotentiaries.

After 18 months of Zoom, Westminster is back. Last night hacks, politicians, lobbyists and kebab shop owners came together in the name of kebabs. In what the Prime Minister described in a special video message as ‘Westminster’s most hotly anticipated culinary event of the year’, an unlikely group assembled including the new education secretary Nadhim Zahawi, former Leader of the Opposition Jeremy Corbyn, Labour frontbencher Rosena Allin-Khan and Barry Gardiner, fresh from his debut at Tory conference. While the evening began on a serious note – with a minute’s silence for the late Sir David Amess – it quickly moved to the power of grilled meat.

In his bid to reverse Brexit, Lord Adonis has demonstrated few qualms in using any weapon at his disposal. For years now Britain's most ironically-titled peer has been keeping up a one man Twitter war, stalking the jungles of social media like some Japanese warrior fighting a campaign that ended 30 years ago. Now though, it appears his latest cynical attack on a member of the government has backfired in spectacular style. Adonis, who has previously demonstrated little interest in green issues, suddenly found himself most exercised at the beginning of the week when he saw the government embroiled in difficulties over its Environment Bill.

Steerpike doesn't browse Novara Media much these days. The Corbynista website has ceased to have much in the way of news value since the Magic Grandpa stood down as Labour leader early last year. Nowadays the unholy trinity of literal communist Ash Sarkar, under-employed YouTuber Michael Walker and David Brent tribute act Aaron Bastani spend most of their time moaning on Twitter about Keir Starmer's beastliness to their comrades on the left.  But now Mr S has found an unlikely common cause with the Trotskyite trio. Novara has today announced that Google-owned YouTube has deleted their channel, supposedly without warning or explanation.

It’s a big week for fans of high politics and hobnobbing. Prior to the launch of Sunday’s COP26 shindig there is first the small matter of the G20 summit in Rome. And while the attention of many attendees – chief among them Britain’s Boris Johnson – will no doubt be on green gambits and climate diplomacy, there are fears that other crucial issues risk being overlooked in the dash towards Net Zero. Chief among these are the various abuses committed by President Xi’s China towards the Uyghur Muslims and the effective destruction of Hong Kong. Xi himself is not expected to physically attend the summit, not having left China since the Covid pandemic began in January 2020.

For many so-called liberals, Jacinda Ardern seemed to be the perfect premier. Warm, empathetic, progressive, above all – moderate – the New Zealand Prime Minister was lionised by the London intelligentsia as the ideal model of a liberal, centrist leader who saved her country by locking down during the pandemic.  But now the shine is coming off the blessed Jacinda as some in the West start to see her all-too human failings. Having managed to irritate both right and left with her clamp down on immigration and complacency on China, Ardern has now admitted what many others have been scared to admit: that her Covid restrictions will mean the emergence of a de-facto two-tier society.

Baroness Hale has evidently been enjoying life since retiring as President of the Supreme Court in January last year. Hale, once dubbed the 'Beyoncé of the legal profession,' became the toast of Remainers everywhere after her withering slap-down to Boris Johnson's prorogation bid in 2019.  Now ensconced on the lecture circuit, the former academic has spent the past eighteen months being showered with those baubles beloved of the establishment: academic honours galore, an Oxford fellowship, a gushing interview in the New Statesman, the obligatory slot on Desert Island Discs and, of course, a book deal with a leading London publisher.