Steerpike

'The testing of your faith produces perseverance' – James 1:2-3. That may be the case, but too much testing can also result in secularism apparently. In an interview with the Beeb, Conservative party leader Kemi Badenoch has said that while she was 'never that religious' growing up though would have 'defined myself as a Christian apologist'. She revealed, however, that all this changed in 2008 – due to Josef Fritzl. The Tory leader said that when she discovered what Fritzl had done to his daughter Elizabeth – imprisoning and repeatedly raping her in his basement over 24 years – it changed her attitude to religion forever.

Well, well, well. After quitting the Beeb amid an antisemitism storm, it transpires that Gary Lineker has been picked up by none other than rival broadcaster ITV. The left-wing right-back will reportedly present a new Saturday night show called The Box, which will see a group of people, possibly celebrities, undergo a series of challenges while stuck inside – you guessed it – a box. Less room for controversial political commentary in that one, Mr S presumes… Lineker's move comes after the sports pundit came under fire for shared a social-media post featuring an ‘anti-Semitic’ rat emoji and declared that Israel’s response to the October 7 terrorist attacks was ‘beyond depraved’.

Another day, another poll. This time YouGov has found that almost six in ten Brits say that immigration is one of the most important issues facing the country – almost double those who rate health as their number one concern, and more than double those worried about crime. Crikey! Fears about immigration have climbed by four percentage points compared to a fortnight ago, to 56 per cent. Healthcare ranked almost equally with immigration in June last year, but since then border control has become more important to Brits.

Uh oh. As if Conservative leader Kemi Badenoch didn't have enough on her plate with the rise of Reform eating into the Tory vote, now one of her predecessors has taken a pop at her. Liz Truss has taken to the august pages of the Telegraph to attack Badenoch, accusing the Leader of the Opposition of being 'not willing to tell the truth to her own supporters'. The gloves are coming off… Truss's scathing remarks follow a piece in the same newspaper by Badenoch, in which the Conservative leader said that Keir Starmer's Labour government was failing to learn from the mini-Budget that led to Truss's downfall.

Another day, another dispiriting quangocracy revelation. This time the spotlight is on the Valuation Office Agency, whose performance has been rapidly declining year on year – while complaints about the organisation have skyrocketed. Freedom of Information data received by the TaxPayers' Alliance shows that call wait times have more than doubled over the last three years, targets have been increasingly missed and complaints about the organisation have shot up by 200 per cent.

There are a number of ways to measure the public’s dissatisfaction with their politicians: party polling figures, favourability ratings and, of course, the result at the ballot box. But a less obvious indicator is baby’s names – and 2024’s most popular list is a damning indictment of Britain’s Prime Minister. It transpires that a grand total of, er, zero children were called ‘Keir’ last year. According to data released today by the Office for National Statistics, the PM’s first name was nowhere to be found on the list of most popular names for boys and girls in England and Wales.

Watch out, John Swinney – Donald Trump is, it seems, eyeing up your job. During the US President's trip up north to visit his Turnberry golf course and open his new 'Mona Lisa' course in Aberdeenshire, Trump was full of praise for bonnie Scotland and its people, going so far as to single out the First Minister to call him a 'terrific guy' during yesterday's opening ceremony. Goodness… But while the President was full of compliments for the SNP leader, he suggested he wouldn't mind knocking him off the top spot to take the First Minister job himself at some point. When quizzed whether he'd ever want to run Scotland, Trump told journalists: Yeah well, Scotland probably has a very good First Minister right now. But Scotland, look, they don't have crime… I could do that.

You'd think two botched party launches would have chastened Zarah Sultana and Jeremy Corbyn somewhat. Not so. The duo continue to heap praise on the number of sign-ups their new group has seen – reaching 550,000 in the last 24 hours – while Sultana uses the rising figure to barb Reform, boasting at the weekend that it had overtaken Nigel Farage's party membership. But, as Reform figures were quick to point out, a free sign-up is a rather different thing than being a paid-up party member… And Mr S has spotted another amusing feature of the dynamic duo's freshly-formed website. YourParty – which Sultana rather confusingly insists is not the long-term name of the new group – uses a plugin from a US company called Donorbox to crowdfund for its lefty cause.

While relations between Sir Keir Starmer and US President Donald Trump have been lauded as 'unparalleled' by the President himself, the same cannot be said for Sadiq Khan. In a press conference in Scotland this afternoon, Trump was pulling no punches when London came up in conversation. When quizzed on whether he would visit the UK's capital, Trump was quick to remark: I'm not a fan of your mayor. I think he's done a terrible job, the mayor of London, a nasty person. Shots fired! Starmer jumped in to defend the Labour politician, interjecting: 'He's a friend of mine.' Not that the President appeared to care all that much, repeating: 'I think he's done a terrible job.' Ouch.

After a rather botched party launch attempt in which Zarah Sultana appeared to force Jeremy Corbyn into letting her co-lead a new left-wing group, speculation abounded about what exactly this outfit would look like – and even what it would be called. Well, the wait is over; the name has been announced. The new harbinger of the left-wing revolution is called…Your Party. Way to underwhelm, eh? Only apparently it's, er, not called 'Your Party' – despite Sultana and Corbyn's social media statement directing supporters to 'your party.uk'. While most X users came to the same conclusion, Sultana has returned to the site to rage: 'It's not called Your Party!' Could the launch of this new group really get any worse?