Steerpike

There are just sixteen days to go until the Budget – and the pitch is being well and truly rolled. Having conducted her 'I can't talk about that' press conference last week, the Chancellor has now done an interview with 5Live to drop a few more hints about the truly Awful Statement she is planning in a fortnight's time. That sound you can hear is the rich and mobile fleeing this country... The big question about her second Budget is whether Reeves intends to break her 16-month-old pledge not to raise income tax, VAT or National Insurance. The answer, increasingly, appears to be 'yes', with the Chancellor informing the Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR) on Friday that a rise in personal taxation is one of the ‘major measures’ that she will announce later this month.

You know you're not a proper political party, until you've had the obligatory youth wing scandal. Pubescent politicos have long been a feature of Westminster life. In the Starmer army they have NOLS – National Labour Students, where generations of power-crazed identikit drones have been churned out, each bearing the same dead eyes and rictus grin. The Tories meanwhile have – or, had – Conservative Future, the successor to the Young Conservatives. Part-dating agency, part-ideological madrasa, these outlets served to inculcate generations of Tories with the attitudes, contacts and god-awful catchphrases needed to govern. Now, in their quest for power, it seems Reform UK has finally got serious.

Oh dear. It seems that the hapless hero of Haringey has done it again. David Lammy is filling in for Keir Starmer today as our under-fire premier jets off to Brazil for COP30. So it is up to his deputy to fill in at today's PMQs session. Lammy stepped up to the despatch box with relish, with a nice planted question from a loyal backbencher to kick things off. Connor Rand gushed his congratulations on Lammy's 'historic achivement' to which the Deputy PM graciously gave his thanks. The bear pit of the Commons at its best.... Unfortunately though for Lammy, it seems that he had forgotten what time of the year it is. For having begun his session, it was then discovered that he was not in fact wearing a poppy – four days before Remembrance Sunday.

The human race, controlled by a soulless, robotic overlord. It is the stuff of countless sci-fi dystopias – but here in Britain, it is just another day of living under Keir Starmer's government. Our charisma-free premier is not exactly known for his love of humanity: just look at his pre-election Guardian interview in which he said he did not have a favourite book or poem, did not know if he was an introvert or extrovert and claimed to have never had a childhood fear. So after 16 months of Sir Keir's reign of error, it is no surprise that half the public now favour switching to a similarly heartless, albeit competent, regime. No, not the Tories – but rather a hypothetical alternative reality in which the British state was run by artificial intelligence.

Last year, Scotland's former first minister Alex Salmond had a heart attack during a trip to North Macedonia and passed away. Salmond brought his country to the brink of independence in 2014 and helped establish the Scottish National party as a mainstream group north of the border – but his career was also tainted by allegations of sexual assault and misconduct. As revealed by the Sunday Times, the ex-FM died almost penniless in 2024, after fighting two court battles in a bid to save his reputation. One of his supporters, former SNP MSP Fergus Ewing, has claimed that 'the prosecution against him arose, in substantial party, from motives of malice on the part of his enemies'. Good heavens.

The royal family hasn't been able to stay away from the spotlight lately, as scrutiny over Andrew Mountbatten Windsor's links to US paedophile Jeffrey Epstein have dominated the news. Last week, Andrew was formally stripped of his titles by King Charles and the royal will vacate his Royal Lodge mansion after it emerged he had been paying a 'peppercorn' rent for two decades. Now President Donald Trump has waded in, saying he feels 'badly' for the royals. Speaking to journalists on Air Force One on Sunday, Trump was quizzed on the King's decision to remove Andrew's titles. The US President remarked: It's a terrible thing that's happened to the [royal] family. That's been a tragic situation. It's too bad. I feel badly for the family.

It turns out Kemi Badenoch's kitchen sink approach in the recent Barnet by-election paid off. The result of the Hendon ward council by-election came in early this morning, with the poll held after former Tory councillor Joshua Conway lost his seat over a job change making him ineligible to stay on. But as Mr S wrote on Tuesday, the Conservative campaign was rather unusual – in the fact that a number of rather senior politicians took the trouble to canvass for their candidate. It's not all that common for a party leader, a shadow justice secretary and the party's chairman to take much interest in a council poll – but given how the Tories are polling at present, every seat counts.

Can Labour get anything right? If it's not freebie fiascos, or tax affair slip-ups, it's Chancellor Rachel Reeves coming under fire over her illegal letting palaver. On Wednesday, the Daily Mail revealed that Reeves had been letting out her family home without a licence. Defending herself, the Chancellor claimed she and her husband were not aware that they were required to secure a selective rental licence. Yet unearthed emails appear to contradict this story… Email exchanges released by No. 10 on Thursday night showed that conversations between Reeves's husband and the couple's letting agent about the need for a licence were had.

Sir Keir Starmer's September reshuffle proved a blessing for some people and a curse for others. Take Shabana Mahmood, for example, whose promotion from Lord Chancellor to Home Secretary has seen her profile grow almost exponentially. Then there are others, like the beleaguered David Lammy, who lost the Foreign Secretary title in his move to justice. Lammy was also made Deputy Prime Minister after Angela Rayner was forced to resign over her tax affairs, but the largely ineffective role isn't much of a silver lining. And there's more bad news for the new Justice Secretary – it transpires he will be losing his Chevening resident too.

Those who claim to despise the limelight always seem to end up being drawn back into it one way or another. Former SNP MP Mhairi Black is a prime example. The former nationalist politician claimed to feel uncomfortable about the scrutiny she received as a politician – and yet she frequently drew attention to herself in the Commons by, for example, being the first MP to use the 'c-word' in a speech. Charming! Black didn't stand in the 2024 general election and, instead of retreating to the more normal life she claimed to crave, she went on to try her hand at comedy at Edinburgh's Fringe Festival. Her journey from politician to performer was chronicled in a Beeb documentary called 'Mhairi Black: Being Me Again'.