Steerpike

‘I don’t want a Home Secretary who can’t pronounce a G at the end of a word,’ said Alastair Campbell earlier this month after listening to Priti Patel. Today it was the Home Secretary’s turn to hit back at Tony Blair's former spin doctor. In her speech at Tory conference, Patel had a message for Campbell, ‘lefty lawyers’ and her Twitter detractors: For those defending the broken system: the traffickers, the do-gooders, the lefty lawyers, the Labour party – they are defending the indefensible.  If at times that means being unpopular on Twitter, I will bear it. If at times it means Tony Blair’s spin doctor mocking my accent, so be it.

Things have gone from bad to pretty much as grim as things can get for an MP — isolating back in Scotland, Margaret Ferrier has been told to resign from parliament by her (now former) party leader Nicola Sturgeon.  https://twitter.com/NicolaSturgeon/status/1311957095231696896?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw The interjection comes following a torrid night for the Rutherglen and Hamilton West MP. Yesterday evening she released a statement in which she admitted travelling down to London by train while suffering from Covid symptoms — where she then spoke in the Commons — before receiving a positive result for a test she took before she went to London. It goes without saying that that decision is already in breach of Covid laws.

The SNP's Margaret Ferrier has released a statement admitted that she travelled down to London after suffering from Covid symptoms. She then returned to Scotland by train after receiving a positive test result... The MP for Rutherglen and Hamilton West apologised for failing to follow the guidance, set down by her own party leader in Scotland Nicola Sturgeon. She also said she has referred herself to the police.  In the statement, Ferrier said: I apologise unreservedly for breaching Covid-19 restrictions by travelling this week when I shouldn't have. There is no excuse for my actions. On Saturday afternoon, after experiencing mild symptoms, I requested a Covid-19 test which I took that day.

When former Tory MP Charlie Elphicke was found guilty of sexual assaulting two women, his wife Natalie – who has succeeded him as MP in his Dover seat – immediately announced the end of their marriage. Three days later, Natalie then gave a tell-all interview to the Sun, in which she explained why she had to leave her husband. Speaking for the first time of what she described as her 'horrible, humiliating and unpleasant' court ordeal, Elphicke told the paper:  'Charlie was keen to get things back on track but I had already made clear to him I was very, very hurt by the allegations and by his behaviour with other women.' Now it can be revealed that Natalie Elphicke received £25,000 for the interview with the paper.

The Prime Minister has never been known as a details man — and he shows no sign of changing his style anytime soon. Boris Johnson was unable to explain the details of his newly announced lockdown rules in North East England. During a Q&A after a speech in Exeter this morning, the PM was asked about the new restrictions but ended up getting himself into a bit of a muddle, telling BBC News that in the North East: 'six people can meet at home, six in hospitality, but not six outside'. For clarity, Mr S would like to point out that, from today, the new rules in the North East prevents households mixing in any indoor setting including hospitality.

The Times reports today that parliament’s bars are exempt from the 10 p.m. curfew as well as from mask-wearing on the grounds that they are formally considered ‘workplace canteens' — providing what some see as a legal get out for MPs and Lords hoping to enjoy privileges denied to the rest of the country.  But palace authorities were quick to put a stop to any libationary loopholes. Conservative MP Dehenna Davison shared a statement from the Speaker's Office: https://twitter.com/DehennaDavison/status/1310529750662877185?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw Let's just hope the parliamentary estate isn't about to see scenes similar to those spotted across the country this weekend...

Former editor of The Spectator and Daily Telegraph Charles Moore is tipped to become chairman of the BBC. Despite being proactively encouraged to put himself forward for the job of director-general earlier this year, Moore made clear he would not be applying for the role. Firstly, he didn’t think he’d get it, writing in his Spectator notebook that he is ‘not a woman’ with ‘no plans to become one’ and ‘under the BBC’s diversity rules, uniformity of gender is required’. Secondly, the job didn’t appeal. He wrote ‘bureaucracy is the enemy of creativity. The BBC can only be a bureaucracy.

Paul Dacre, the former editor of the Daily Mail, has reportedly been asked by the Prime Minister to chair the broadcasting regulator Ofcom. This is the same Paul Dacre who, when put in charge of the Press Complaints Commission, Boris Johnson compared to ‘putting the Boston Strangler in charge of the code of practice for door-to-door salesmen’. The same Paul Dacre who, when Boris Johnson was elected Tory leader, said that ‘the party of family values has chosen as leader a man of whom to say he has the morals of an alley cat would be to libel the feline species’. To Mr Steerpike, this doesn't seem like the best start to a working relationship.

The National Trust has been making headlines of late over its decision to dip a toe into woke waters. As well as a previous drive for rainbow lanyards and trading antique furniture for beanbags, they recently came up with a dossier listing the country pads of Winston Churchill, Rudyard Kipling and William Wordsworth as properties with connections to ‘colonialism and slavery’ – the latter because his brother captained an East India Company ship. In this week's issue of the Spectator, Charles Moore describes the manifesto as shameful.  Now its costing them visitors.

Gasps abounded in the Commons this afternoon after a testy exchange between Defence Secretary Ben Wallace and his Labour opposite number. A clearly riled Wallace decided that he had had enough of John Healey's interventions during the second reading of his bill to limit prosecutions of servicemen and women. The cabinet minister told the House:  Much of the mess we are having to come and clean up today is because of your illegal wars, your events in the past and the way you have run this, the, the, the... the safety for our forces. Readers don't need to be told that neither the invasion of Iraq nor the war in Afghanistan have been found to be illegal. So it is intriguing to see the minister responsible for HM Forces stand up in the Commons and say otherwise.

With the country facing a possible second wave and the prospect of further restrictions to our daily lives, Labour’s Kate Green has an entirely different train of thought.   The shadow education secretary wondered how best to exploit the coronavirus for political gain. Speaking at a Labour Connected event, Green said: 'I think we should use the opportunity, don’t let a good crisis go to waste'.  These comments somewhat overshadowed Keir Starmer’s keynote conference speech, with shadow foreign secretary Lisa Nandy forced to make an embarrassing apology during this morning's accompanying media rounds.