Steerpike

Matt Hancock's hot girl summer continues unabated. The West Suffolk MP was last week snapped frolicking on the beaches of Cornwall, surfboard in hand, a month after being forced to resign for breaking Covid rules with advisor Gina Coladangelo. Now Steerpike can report that the 42-year-old has become an unlikely star on TikTok after recently encountering a group of youthful commuters on the District Line.  The group were apparently unaware of Hancock's identity but delighted in teasing the poor ex-minister about his choice of hat wear and stealing the baseball cap to wear themselves. Videos recorded of the encounter detail how 'The whole tube was singing... We love you Matt, we do!' — something which 'made our night' according to the adolescent uploader.

The papers have been full of speculation this month about rumours of a rift between Rishi Sunak and Boris Johnson. The pair are reported to have clashed over travel quarantine rules amid speculation about Sunak’s designs on the top job. Such tensions are nothing new in Westminster politics of course – not for nothing has the relationship between Numbers 10 and 11 Downing Street been described as the ‘San Andreas Fault’ which runs through British government. But it appears the pair are not the only Chancellor and Prime Minister to have fallen out in recent months. David Cameron and George Osborne appear to be experiencing a rift of their own, judging by the Old Etonian’s Instagram activity.

After a year out of the headlines, John Bercow is back. The former Commons Speaker appeared on the Observer front page in June to announce his membership of the Labour party, eighteen months after retiring from Parliament.  The onetime Tory right winger is still smarting over the government's refusal to award him a peerage and thus a seat for life in the Lords to happily chunter away. There is now speculation as to whether Bercow's revised goal is a return to the Commons under Labour colours – as if his former colleagues there had not suffered enough. One story Bercow will have been less pleased about was the news last month that he has broken his promise not to claim his gold-plated Speaker's pension until he is 65.

Last month Steerpike reported news that Tony Blair was plotting a return to Parliament. One of the many unwanted consequences of Covid was the former Prime Minister's return to the spotlight, in part due to the work of his eponymous institute on issues like mass testing and vaccines. With polls suggesting that members of Starmer's Labour now view their party's ex-leader in a more favourable light, could a 'de Gaulle-style comeback' be on the cards? Alas, the onetime premier – whose years out of office have been peppered with various gigs including JP Morgan, Zurich and UI Energy – appears to have now concluded that life as a septuagenarian backbencher is not for him.

After 20 years, 456 UK military deaths and £22 billion spent, Britain's involvement in Afghanistan is over. With the last American forces leaving within a month, news out of the war-torn nation has been predictably grim, with the Taliban sweeping the country amid reports of executions, evacuations and troops switching sides. The situation is now so dire that Boris Johnson has been forced to chair an emergency Cobra meeting this afternoon. British troops went into the country in October 2001 – four months after Johnson was first elected as an MP for Henley – with the subsequent two decades of fighting attracting much comment from the future Prime Minister during his rise from a backbencher and commentator to a minister climbing the greasy pole.

The antics of Scottish Covid advisor Devi Sridhar have been one of the few bright spots throughout the pandemic. During the last fifteen months, Sridhar has become something of a pin-up girl to the SNP's online army of so-called 'cybernats.' This has been due to her repeated jibes at the Westminster government, her demands for more power which Holyrood already had and her effusive praise for First Minister Nicola Sturgeon’s ‘wise words’ and ‘strong leadership’. Not to mention of course her suggestion that an independent Scotland would have done better against Covid. More seriously, Sridhar has also been accused of spreading misinformation about the Oxford vaccine.

Tensions between Westminster and the devolved parliaments have been a constant feature of the Covid pandemic. Up in Edinburgh, the First Minister Nicola Sturgeon has made full use of the crisis – hinting constantly at closing the English border and peppering her daily press conferences with pointed jibes at London.  Such actions are of course merely in keeping with the SNP's penchant for power grabs and undermining the Union. In April the party's Holyrood manifesto included a section grandly titled 'global affairs' boasting about their plans to engage with the 'Scottish diaspora' and the establishment of a 'Scottish Council for Global Affairs.' Foreign policy is, of course, a reserved power for Westminster.

It may be recess but diplomacy does not stop. Last week Boris Johnson welcomed one of the main Belarusian opposition leaders Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya to Downing Street to show his support for the cause.  According to a No. 10 readout of the meeting, the Prime Minister claimed that the British people shared with Belarusians 'fundamental values such as a belief in democracy, human rights and rule of law' and that the UK “stands in solidarity of the people of Belarus and will continue to take action to support them.' Johnson subsequently met this rhetoric with actions yesterday when the UK introduced trade, financial and aviation sanctions on the Lukashenko regime in response to its continued undermining of democracy and human rights violations.

Shame, opprobrium and multiple select committee grillings – was the disgrace of Greensill worth it for David Cameron? The answer would now appear to be yes, judging from documents obtained by the BBC ahead of a Panorama special programme tonight on the story of the company's collapse. According to the Beeb, Cameron made about £7 million from the finance company prior to its collapse in March of this year. Documents indicate the Old Etonian received £3.25 million after cashing in Greensill shares in 2019 with details being revealed in a letter from the business to the onetime Tory leader. The letter suggests Cameron was going to be paid £3.3 million after tax for a tranche of his Greensill shares.