Steerpike

Nicola Sturgeon had some choice words to say about Brexit last month. Speaking at one of Scotland’s daily coronavirus briefings, the First Minister said she was ‘deeply frustrated and depressed’ about the prospect of no deal in the new year, and suggested that to talk about Brexit in the middle of a pandemic was not only dangerous, but deeply irresponsible. The country doesn’t need ‘another big thing to be dealing with’ when the focus should be on coronavirus, the First Minister lamented. So you can imagine Mr Steerpike’s surprise when Sturgeon appeared to embark on her own political pet project yesterday.

Mr Steerpike was not exactly impressed when the government launched a new website feature this morning to tell people which tier they were going to be in – and which promptly crashed, leaving people in limbo. But if you were left disappointed by the tech blunder, that was nothing compared to the Speaker of the House’s reaction, when he found out in Parliament the government had put the new tiers list online. After being told by Labour’s Valerie Vaz that the government had dropped the information online, before alerting the House, a furious Lindsay Hoyle lambasted the government for treating the Commons with disrespect.

The Tory MP and former 1922 committee chair Charles Walker appears to have become involved in a lockdown protest outside Parliament today. The MP was outside the House of Commons when he witnessed an elderly woman being arrested by police. In response, Walker told the officers that their arrest was an ‘outrage’ and was not necessary: https://twitter.com/Tridg98/status/1331236485748678657?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw Walker then appeared in the House of Commons to make a point of order. He said that the woman had been taking part in a peaceful protest outside Parliament before she was carried ‘spread-eagle’ to a police van.

In case you missed the memo, it's now illegal to cross the border to Scotland unless you have a 'reasonable excuse' that meets the First Minister's requirements. Nicola Sturgeon's new law – which limits the number of people who can travel from England to Scotland – is said to be aimed at protecting public health north of the border.  Luckily Sturgeon has her close allies on standby to support her in policing this new restriction. Step forward Ian Blackford. The SNP's leader in Westminster is so devoted to the cause that he has even taken to social media to look out for those who may have fallen foul.

Boris Johnson has been forced into an embarrassing row today, after the government published a report into allegations that Home Secretary Priti Patel bullied her staff – and which found that she broke the ministerial code. Despite this, the Prime Minister declined to punish Patel, which then led his advisor on ministerial standards to stand down. A protracted dispute with the civil service about bullying would be awkward enough, merely days after Downing Street promised a grand reset of its communications. But Mr S wonders if the Patel row may have come at the worst possible moment for the government: considering that it is currently anti-bullying week.

Whenever Donald Trump tweets something these days, it doesn't take long before Twitter moves in with a warning. 'This claim about election fraud is disputed,' is one of the latest hectoring messages to be slapped on the outgoing president's tweets. Yesterday no fewer than nine of Trump's tweets were accompanied by similar links added by moderators. It's clear that when Twitter wants to, it can act quickly.  So Mr S wonders how long it will be before it acts against another politician with a disputed claim on his profile? Jeremy Corbyn was told yesterday that he won't be getting the Labour whip back. This effectively means Corbyn is now an independent MP. Yet on his Twitter profile he describes himself as 'Labour MP for Islington North'.

Jeremy Corbyn's fan club has reacted with predictable outrage to the decision not to hand him back the party whip. Starmer's refusal to do so was not 'the right thing to do,' said Labour MP Clive Lewis. 'At a time of national crisis, division in the Labour party serves nobody but the Tory Government,' said Richard Burgon. But Mr S wonders whether Corbyn will really be that bothered by the decision? During Labour's last stint in power, Corbyn voted against the whip 428 times. And if you go further back, to when Corbyn first became an MP in 1983, he has voted against the whip 617 times during his time in Parliament.

At the end of October Jeremy Corbyn was suspended from the party he loved and led, after suggesting that concerns about Labour’s anti-Semitism problem during his tenure had been ‘dramatically overstated’ for political reasons. At the time of his suspension, the former Labour leader seemed to strike a defiant tone. In a broadcast interview, Corbyn suggested that the number of Labour’s anti-Semitism complaints had been ‘exaggerated’ and that he was ‘not part of the problem’. Mr S wonders though if Corbyn might be worried about being re-admitted to the party. Today, the former Labour leader released a statement on Facebook which he had given to the party on the day of his suspension.

While most people welcomed the news last week that Pfizer had developed a vaccine that was over 90 per cent effective, others saw it as a very personal vindication. In particular, allies of the head of the UK’s vaccine taskforce, Kate Bingham, suggested that her decision to buy 40 million doses for the UK was a masterstroke that proved her doubters wrong. Bingham had previously been under fire for spending £670,000 on PR consultants at the taxpayers’ expense.

The £12 billion splurge of taxpayer cash into a test-and-trace system meant that due process was suspended. Cash was spent without question, shortcuts were taken, and basic questions were dodged. For example: was contact tracing ever going to stop a virus which, as we knew as early as March, left no symptoms in many of those it infects? As well, in the rush, mates were hired pretty quickly. Today’s Sunday Times focuses on a scandal that has been brewing for some time now: the way that friends of well-connected Tories have been looped in on the biggest Covid projects. Some are on rich contracts, others as unpaid advisers. If you’re a lobbyist, like Portland chairman George Pascoe Watson, you don’t need the money.

There may be a pandemic on but that's not going to stop Downing Street staff briefing against one another. Tensions came to a head this week after Boris Johnson’s director of communications, Lee Cain, announced his resignation. The row began after it was reported in the Times and Daily Mail that Cain – a former Vote Leave staffer and Daily Mirror chicken – had been offered the new Chief of Staff position in Downing Street. Opposition was raised – through the media – and he quit.  That move has sparked a wider discussion about the power struggle in 10 Downing Street. While Cain may be on the way out, the battle for power is far from over. So who are the main players? Here's Mr S's guide of the various Downing Street factions.