Steerpike

Back when John Bercow was in the Commons' hot seat, a Tory telling-off was part of the daily run of events. Things have changed under his replacement Lindsay Hoyle. But today the speaker took no prisoners as he berated the government over its use of emergency coronavirus powers.  At the start of PMQs today, Hoyle accused ministers of showing 'total disregard' and 'contempt' for parliament. He said: 'The way in which the government has exercised its powers...during this crisis has been totally unsatisfactory. All too often, important statutory instruments have been published a matter of hours before they come into force. The government must make greater efforts to prepare measures more quickly so that this House can debate and decide...

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.

Is Tory mayoral hopeful Shaun Bailey a fan of renaming things or not? It's hard to tell. When London mayor Sadiq Khan announced a commission to review statues, road names and plaques, Bailey was furious: But now it seems he has changed his tune, at least when it comes to the names of stations. Bailey has suggested that TfL's dire finance situation could be easily fixed – by allowing companies to bid to rename tube stations.  Bailey told the Telegraph:  'We need to fix the service that Londoners love. That’s why I’ll invite businesses to sponsor station names and Tube lines. With TfL’s funding in crisis, we need ideas like this. We’ve done it before, with Barclays and Santander sponsoring our bike hire scheme.

This afternoon, leading human-rights lawyer Amal Clooney (and wife of George) handed in her resignation to the government. Clooney has been a UK special envoy for media freedom since July last year, when she promised to use her position to stick up for embattled and persecuted journalists around the world. Her relationship with the UK government turned sour this month though, after minister Brandon Lewis stood at the Despatch box and said the government’s Internal Market Bill would break ‘international law’, once passed. This disregard for an international treaty clearly offended the sensibilities of Clooney, and after meeting with the Foreign Secretary, she decided she could no longer countenance working with Her Majesty’s Government. https://twitter.

Chris Grayling recently went down in history as the one of the only men able to lose a rigged election. The former Transport Secretary had been lined up by No. 10 to chair the intelligence and security committee, but ended up being rejected by his fellow committee members when his Tory colleague, Julian Lewis, decided to vote for himself instead. But now things are looking up for failing Grayling. Grayling has got himself a new job advising a ports company for the hefty sum of £100,000 a year. Before critics get too outraged, it’s important to take into account that this is for an exhausting seven hours of work per week.