Steerpike

Handbags last night at the Kensington and Chelsea council meeting. A motion on sexual assault and harassment prompted an extraordinary moment when Tory councillor Janet Evans took to the stand to criticise her Labour opponents for a lack of initiative in tackling such issues.  Evans, who was born in America but has lived in the UK for decades, was midway through her fiery speech when her Labour opponent Sina Lari interrupted to yell: 'Go back to New York!' Lari has since claimed that he too was the subject of derogatory insults which were not picked up on camera.

The government's flagship Animal Sentience Bill is (slowly) making its way through parliament, with Monday afternoon seeing the Defra select committee take evidence from a range of experts. Steerpike has covered the proposed legislation extensively in recent months, detailing the concerns of peers about its plans to create a powerful Animal Sentience Committee which would judge the effect of government policy on the welfare of animals. A similar bill was pulled by the then Environment Secretary Michael Gove three years ago after MPs noted it would open every government policy to judicial review.

After eight months of confining his thoughts to Substack and Twitter, tonight Dom Cummings went mainstream. His first television interview with Laura Kuenssberg laid bare the tensions that exited throughout Boris Johnson's first year in government and his growing discontent with how the Prime Minister runs his government. Steerpike has already covered Dom's role in saving the Queen from meeting a Covid riddled Prime Minister. But here are four more 'Dom bombs' revealed in tonight's interview: 1. Plotting to get rid of the PM days after the election Cummings revealed how his issues with Johnson started even before the pandemic began and that less than a month after the victorious 2019 election triumph he was on manoeuvres against the PM: https://www.youtube.com/watch?

And so after months of debate and disagreement, at last the government has today revealed vaccine passports will be introduced in nightclubs and large events from the end of September. This afternoon vaccines minister Nadhim Zahawi told the House of Commons that a negative Covid test will not be sufficient; instead, only two vaccinations will do.  https://twitter.com/JasonGroves1/status/1417158734825074689?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw Proof of a jab will not be needed to enter pubs and restaurants but individual landlords do have the power to insist on them. Today's decision follows a review by Cabinet Office minister Michael Gove earlier this month into the possible use of Covid certification.

Following yesterday's news that health secretary Sajid Javid had tested positive for Covid, it seemed only a matter of time before other cabinet ministers were similarly forced to self-isolate. Javid had a 'lengthy' meeting with Boris Johnson on Friday afternoon, just hours before his symptoms developed. So, surely the Prime Minister will be expected to self-isolate? Think again...This morning, No. 10 has released the following statement: The Prime Minister and Chancellor have been contacted by NHS Test and Trace as contacts of someone who has tested positive for Covid. They will be participating in the daily contact testing pilot to allow them to continue to work from Downing Street. They will be conducting only essential government business during this period.

As the government prepares to lift nearly all legal Covid restrictions on Monday, ministers are at pains to emphasise that the pandemic is not over. A helpful reminder can be found in the news that Sajid Javid has today tested positive. In a video posted on Twitter, the Health Secretary — who is double jabbed — said he took a lateral flow test after feeling a ‘bit groggy’ on Friday evening, but his symptoms are ‘very mild’. https://twitter.com/sajidjavid/status/1416375392374513668?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw Given around a million Brits were told to self-isolate in the first week of July alone, perhaps it’s a taste of things to come. But as Javid now faces a period of self-isolation, who will be getting pinged and told to join him?

Andy Burnham is very much the flavour of the month in Labour circles at present. Having left Westminster in 2016 when it became clear he wasn't going to become leader any time soon, he has undergone something of a renaissance as mayor of Manchester.  In this capacity he gets to govern an overwhelmingly left-leaning city and enjoy the tributes of cooing London based journalists who declare him the 'king of the north.' The contrast between Burnham and his struggling leader was most apparent in the aftermath of May's local elections; whereas the former was re-elected with 67 per cent of the vote and bagged himself a column in a London newspaper, the latter gave a dreadful pool clip and then disappeared for the following 48 hours.