Steerpike

To Scotland, where Nigel Farage is visiting for the first time in six years. It's a day of firsts for Reform UK, it seems, as the party announced this morning it had recruited ex-Tory councillor Duncan Massey – the first local councillor in Granite City to join Farage's crowd. Massey is the 14th councillor to join Reform UK in Scotland, blasting his former party for failing to offer Scots a vision for the future. 'The whole country is struggling at the moment,' Massey told the assembled press pack outside Aberdeen's seafood restaurants The Silver Darling.

Well, well, well. The general secretary of the Scottish Trades Union Congress has found herself at the centre of a rather embarrassing scandal. It transpires that Roz Foyer – who has repeatedly blasted second home ownership – owns a total of, er, five homes, including a flat in Spain as well as a £100,000 plot of land. Talk about hypocrisy, eh? As revealed by the Mail on Sunday, Foyer – who earns up to six figures a year – lives in a £280,000 four-bedroom home in north-west Glasgow. On top of this, however, she has a £240,000 flat in Edinburgh, a £145,000 terraced house in Glasgow, a £125,000 Spanish flat that she rents out for a staggering £1,000 a week and a £150,000 holiday cottage on the Isle of Jura.

As if the Attorney General hadn't proven his ability for conjuring up negative headlines enough, Lord Hermer took it upon himself on Thursday to compare political threats to leave the ECHR to the Nazis. Speaking to the Royal Institute for International Affairs (RUSI) defence think tank, Hermer earnestly told his audience: 'The claim that international law is fine as far as it goes, but can be put aside when conditions change, is a claim that was made in the early 1930s by "realist" jurists in Germany.' But today, after a momentous backlash, Hermer has finally apologised for his, er, 'clumsy' language. You can say that again!

Whatever happened to that £22bn black hole, eh? As yet more pay rises are dolled out to workers across the country this month, Mr S has been scouring the government’s transparency data to take a closer look at just how many times ministers have met with union barons. The conclusion? Quite a lot. In fact, in just six months, ministers tabled over 220 meetings with their trade union representatives – working out at just under 40 meetings a month and 1.3 a day. Talk about up the workers… Between July and December 2024, some 222 meetings were held between union representatives and Labour ministers.

To the Metropolitan Police Commissioner, who is now calling on forces to routinely release information on suspects' ethnicities – even if it 'emboldens' racists. In the wake of a recent attack in Liverpool, Sir Mark Rowley has urged police to be 'realistic' about handling information surrounding a crime and has made the case for earlier release of personal details given the number of 'half truths' already shared online. How very interesting. Rowley's comments follow a furore over the information put out by the Merseyside Police force about the man arrested after a car ploughed into a crowd of supporters celebrating Liverpool Football Club's record.

Another day, another bad poll for Sir Keir Starmer's party. Now YouGov has revealed that Labour has recorded its lowest poll rating since before the 2019 general election, with just over a fifth of Brits saying they would vote for the reds tomorrow, while Nigel Farage's Reform UK sees its largest lead to date on the party of government. How very interesting… The latest data from the polling giant, collected between 26-27 May, shows that a little under a third of British adults would back Farage's crowd if there was a national poll tomorrow – a figure that remains consistent on the week before. Meanwhile Starmer's army has dropped a point to 21 per cent, only just ahead of Kemi Badenoch's boys in blue, who have jumped three points from last week to 19 per cent.

To Scotland, where in just over a week's time, the first Holyrood by-election for six years will take place. It's set to a be a tight race in the constituency of Hamilton, Larkhall and Stonehouse and tensions between the political parties in the running are rising. Now Nigel Farage has hit out at Scottish Labour leader Anas Sarwar, rather bizarrely accusing the Glasgow politician of introducing 'sectarianism into Scottish politics' as the spat between the pair continues. Dear oh dear… Farage's remarks follow the feud over Reform UK's attack ad, which has selectively clipped one of Sarwar's speeches from 2022 to claim that the Scottish Labour leader will 'prioritise the Pakistani community'.

Nigel Farage has not seen eye-to-eye with his former colleague Rupert Lowe about much lately, but the outrage sparked by the imprisonment of Lucy Connolly has them both on the same page. The wife of a Conservative councillor was jailed last year over an offensive tweet about the riots of last summer – and last week, her appeal against her sentence was quashed. Now, in a London speech, the Reform UK leader has condemned Connolly's incarceration, with the Clacton MP telling reporters: 'I want to make it absolutely clear: Lucy Connolly should not be in prison.' The 42-year-old mother was sentenced to 31 months imprisonment in October after posting on social media about the riots sparked by the horrific Southport murders.