Steerpike

He was once best known for his expansive, rambling blog posts but now Dominic Cummings appears to have a new favourite form of medium. Boris Johnson's former chief special adviser announced a fortnight ago he was joining paid-for newsletter site Substack, launching his first incendiary post last Wednesday by sharing screenshots in which his former boss called health secretary Matt Hancock 'hopeless.' Today the Vote Leave supremo has returned to the site for an 'ask me anything' public Q&A session with his army of public subscribers who paid £100 a year for the privilege. Mr S is reading along with the rest of Westminster and will be providing you with a list of the highlights and lowlights from Cummings's virtual grill-athon.

Next Thursday is election day in the Batley and Spen by-election and with polls showing a six point Tory lead, it's no surprise CCHQ has been stepping up its ground game there. Boris Johnson was deployed on Friday to visit the constituency, taking in Batley's largest employer, Fox's biscuit factory, the home of kids' favourite party rings. Asked for his favourite biscuit, a suitably on message PM told local hacks: 'My favourite biscuit I had today was a Fox’s jam and cream I think it’s called. It was terrific' Unfortunately for Fox's the Prime Minister's visit has gone down less favourably on social media, with some of the most notorious Remainiac accounts using it as a chance to dunk on the popular biscuit manufacturer.

Following this morning's shock by-election result, gloom and despair are gripping much of the Conservative party in the South of England. But one ex-Tory Cabinet minister was in brighter spirits today, with former Attorney General Dominic Grieve popping up on BBC News to explain why his onetime colleague turned Brexit nemesis Boris Johnson is to blame for the defeat in true blue Buckinghamshire. Grieve, who lost the Tory whip on Johnson's orders in September 2019 after voting with opposition MPs on a three line whip, has repaid the snub by frequent jibes at the Prime Minister, such as labelling him a 'vacuum of integrity.

They say you should keep your friends close and your enemies even closer. If that’s the case, there must be an awful lot of people who are close to the health secretary, Matt Hancock. Hancock has not had the best of weeks. On Wednesday, Dominic Cummings released a series of WhatsApps which appeared to show the Prime Minister calling the health secretary ‘hopeless’ in the midst of the coronavirus crisis. Asked about the texts later, Hancock meekly replied that he ‘didn’t think’ he was that useless. Now it turns out that he isn’t exactly well-regarded by senior NHS officials either. In an interview yesterday, the outgoing chief of the NHS, Sir Simon Stevens, was asked whether he thought Matt Hancock was hopeless too.

Few MPs in the House of Commons have been as eloquent on either side of the lockdown argument as Charles Walker. The MP for Broxbourne returned to the chamber yesterday afternoon to take aim at the scientists sitting on Sage — the government's Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies. Walker — who has accused Boris Johnson of treating MPs like dogs and carried around a pint of milk in protest — began his speech by contrasting the status of elected members with that of the unelected 'experts': As you know, Mr Deputy Speaker, Sage has huge power over our lives. It has power over whom we hug and hold. It has power over which businesses open and which businesses close. In essence, it has power over who keeps their job and who loses their job.

Since his eight hour long testimony to a joint select committee last month Dominic Cummings has been unusually quiet. The Vote Leave maestro has declined interview requests after levelling a litany of accusations at Boris Johnson and his government, leaving Matt Hancock and others to defend their record in various studios and parliamentary appearances. Now though he has returned to the fray in a 7,250 word Substack post to his £100 a year subscribers. Steerpike is still working his way manfully through reams of Cummings prose but once again Matt Hancock does not come out well.

Members of the Supreme Court have had something of a wary relationship with ministers in recent years. Since the landmark Gina Miller verdict in January 2017 and then the unanimous prorogation case in September 2019, there have been various Tory rumblings in Westminster about moves to abolish, reform or simply rename the highest court in the land.  Amid fears of an increasingly 'activist' court and accusations of bias, senior judges have been understandably jumpy about their future with current Supreme Court president Lord Reed claiming in March that any renaming would be ‘idiotic’ and 'an act of national self-harm.

Lord Sumption was one of the starring guests on last night's launch of GB News. The former judge, who stepped down from the Supreme Court in 2018, has enjoyed a varied career as one of Britain's best paid barristers, a medieval historian and even as Keith Joseph's onetime adviser but has emerged in recent months as a leading critic of the government's lockdown policy. Sumption's frequent and pointed interventions have sparked some controversy among the legal profession which has been traditionally wary of intervening in politics. So it caused something of a stir this afternoon when it was discovered that Sumption has been removed from the online list of members of the court's supplementary panel.

It's private members' bill week in Parliament, with lucky backbenchers who won a place in the ballot presenting their proposed laws to the Commons on Wednesday. Labour MP Barry Gardiner, who spent 24 hours in the party's leadership race last year, is up and planning a bill to outlaw 'fire and rehire' tactics used by some employers to drive down pay and conditions. It comes as Unite the Union – Labour's biggest donor in recent years – runs a major campaign on this issue, coordinating a letter signed by more than 140 MPs and peers to outlaw the 'abhorrent' practice which occurs when an employer dismisses an employee and offers to rehire them on new terms.