Steerpike

Matt Hancock broke his own 10 p.m curfew to continue drinking at a parliamentary bar, according to reports in the Mail on Sunday.  A senior Tory MP told the paper that the Health Secretary continued to nurse a large glass of white wine until at least 10.25 p.m. during a late night tipple that saw Hancock mock the government's own failings, saying: 'Drinks are on me — but Public Health England are in charge of the payment methodology so I will not be paying a thing.'  A spokesperson denied the allegations and insisted that Hancock left the parliamentary estate following a 9.42 p.m. Commons vote.  Meanwhile, lockdown rebel Charles Walker and chair of the Commons' Administration Committee pledged to investigate the claims.

Rishi Sunak received a fair amount of flak this week, after ITV reported that he’d told struggling musicians to retrain and find other jobs. The Chancellor appeared to actually be speaking more generally to the broadcaster about job losses when he said that ‘I can’t pretend that everyone can do exactly the same job that they were doing at the beginning of this crisis.’ But that did not stop a troupe of outraged musicians calling for Sunak’s head, with DJ Calvin Harris even piling in on the Chancellor. Sunak should fear not though, at least one member of the music aristocracy still has his back. Today, Brian May of Queen appeared on ITV’s This Morning, and was asked about Sunak’s remarks.

Boris Johnson had a strong message today during his Tory conference speech, for those who believe he lost his mojo after contracting Covid and being hospitalised. The Prime Minister described claims he has lost his lustre as ‘nonsense’, ‘self-evident drivel’, and even ‘seditious propaganda’ from the kind of people who wanted to stop Brexit being done. Mr S isn’t quite sure that quite describes those unhappy with Boris’s recent performances in the Tory party… To back up his claim that he’s still fighting fit, the PM promised that he’d be more than happy to arm or leg wrestle any doubters.

Oh dear. It's fair to say Matt Hancock isn't exactly flavour of the month in Westminster. There are plenty of MPs on both sides of the House who blame the Health Secretary for tough restrictions and failures on testing. Matters have only been made worse with the revelation that 16,000 cases of coronavirus went unreported as a result of an administrative spreadsheet error. Hancock appeared at the despatch box on Monday afternoon to face questions from MPs on the blunder. Alas it wasn't what one could describe as a charm offensive. When Labour's Stella Creasy put to him that a week had effectively been lost as a result of the mistake and the companies responsible should be held to account, Hancock had a curious reply.

‘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.