Steerpike

President Biden's stimulus splurge is clearly working wonders, given the new found desire of American companies to stuff dollars into Prince Harry's pockets. Following the news yesterday that the exiled royal would be joining billion dollar tech start up BetterUp, America's answer to George Osborne has now bagged himself a second gig alongside existing million dollar content deals with Netflix and Spotify. The new role will be at international nonprofit the Aspen Institute, where he will serve on the Orwell-esque 'Commission on Information Disorder'. Prince Harry – or should we call him Commissioner Harry – will join 14 others and three co-chairs to hold a six-month study on how inaccurate information spreads across the country.

What's going on over at Reddit? The popular chatroom, which bills itself as 'the front page of the internet', has been accused of blocking Spectator articles. Earlier this week, the most popular UK politics page was suspended from public view and users who posted a link to a Spectator article were blocked. The article in question mentions one Aimee Challenor, a former ‘rising star’ of the Green party and transgender activist, who left the party in disgrace after she appointed her father — a violent paedophile — as her election agent. According to the moderators on the Reddit group r/UKPolitics, Aimee has since been hired by the tech firm, which is now zealously blocking content about her.

‘Go woke, go broke’ has been a constant jibe at trendy businesses and progressive media outlets in recent years. But now the same refrain can be directed at Sadiq Khan and his Greater London Authority as it tries to plug a £500 million Covid-related black hole that has wrecked its revenue streams. The number of staff at City Hall has swelled by 45 per cent in just four years, rising from 817 in May 2016 to 1,190 in April 2020. Among these include no less than nine staff tasked with responsibilities for inclusion, diversity and fairness – a ratio of one per 132 total employees. Posts include a Programme Director for Economic Fairness who earns between £70,241 and £76,029 compared to a London Assembly Member’s salary of £58,543.

Labour have been taking a cheeky pop at the PM's father today in the Guardian over new coronavirus regulations coming into force later this month. Under the guidelines from 29 March, people will be allowed to leave the UK to prepare a second home for sale or rent as part of a list of specific 'reasonable excuses to travel' outside the country. Andrew Gwynne has dubbed this the 'Stanley Johnson clause' in a reference to the latter allegedly breaking Covid guidelines by travelling to his Greek villa to make it 'Covid-proof.

Things got a little heated in the House of Commons last night after defence secretary Ben Wallace gave short shrift to fellow Tory MP and ex Royal Anglian Regiment reservist Lieutenant Mark Francois. All hell broke loose after a war of words over the Ministry of Defence (MoD) budget blackhole. Scot’s Guard’s own Captain Wallace pointed out that criticism lobbed from the backbenches about defence procurement would carry a little more weight if the honourable critics had themselves not been former defence ministers overseeing the deficit of which they complained. Lieutenant Francois was particularly aggrieved, demanding corrections to the record and apologies galore.

It has not been a great nine weeks for the European Union. Readers both inside and outside the supranational bloc will have been horrified at the dithering, disinformation and mixed messages of the commission and its national leaders, now considering an export ban to stop vaccine orders to the UK being honoured. The French position on the Oxford jab for instance has gone from banning it, to allowing it for just those under the age of 65, to allowing it for all, to banning it and now allowing it only for those over 55. Polling now shows 61 per cent of people in that country think the AstraZeneca vaccine is unsafe.  It all seems to have been rather too much for some of Britain's most prominent remainers.

Oh dear. Appearing on BBC Two's Politics Live this afternoon, Labour left winger Nadia Whittome refused to condemn the violent protesters in Bristol last night that left 20 policeman injured including two in a serious condition.  Despite being asked four times by presenter Jo Coburn, Whittome would only say 'I'm not going to get into condemning protesters when we don't know what's happened yet. We need a full investigation into what has happened.' https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KlxijNsB6kA It is worth noting that all four of Bristol's Labour MPs and the city's Labour mayor Marvin Rees have already criticised the actions of the protesters, with Rees claiming it was 'selfish, self-indulgent, self-centred violence.' https://twitter.com/SkyNews/status/1373921295054831616?

Last week reports emerged that the Daily Express is due to drop its famous crusader masthead, in place since the days of Max Beaverbrook and his Empire free trade campaign. The right-wing Express has already dropped its strapline 'the world's greatest newspaper' in 2018, shortly after being bought by Trinity Mirror now renamed as Reach. Reports of editorial interference have not gone down well with some long-standing conservative readers, such as Romford's no-nonsense Tory MP Andrew Rosindell: https://twitter.com/AndrewRosindell/status/1373231334173380609?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw https://twitter.com/AndrewRosindell/status/1373231336085991431?