Steerpike

Oh dear. It seems that not everyone has taken Theresa May's appeal for party unity to heart. Although Amber Rudd and Iain Duncan Smith penned a Sunday Telegraph article calling for Tories to come together this week for the EU Withdrawal Bill votes, not everyone appears convinced. Over the weekend, former Remain rebel Antoinette Sandbach took to social media to tweet 'Remainers need courage to go for the kill', and share Matthew Parris's Times column on the topic. In the piece, Parris urges would-be rebels to not be put off rebelling by the whips: 'This is the moment when you must lift your eyes from the trees and see the wood.

Theresa May's cabinet is divided and her MPs increasingly worried over the government's Brexit plans – or lack thereof. Yet despite all this, the latest Times/YouGov poll puts the Tories seven points ahead of Labour. With many in Westminster left scratching their head over the apparent disconnect, could a clue be found in ITV2's Love Island? Mr S only asks after Friday's episode saw contestants on the popular reality show – in which twenty-somethings attempt to find their perfect match – discuss the issue of the day. Only, rather than talk backstop options, customs arrangements, the Irish border or post-Brexit immigration systems, the conversation centred around what Brexit was and whether the UK would still have trees come March 2019: https://twitter.

Labour's flip-flopping on Brexit means that many Leave supporters simply don't trust the party. So Mr S wonders whether it was really such a wise idea for Shami Chakrabarti to heckle a voter on Question Time last night: Audience member: We're the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland. We voted to leave so let's pull up anchor and sail away, OK. Shami Chakrabarti: Where you going? ... I mean 'Sail away' is a lovely song but you need to go somewhere. Perhaps it's time for Shami to listen to voters rather than shout at them...

While David Davis has hogged the headlines recently, Boris Johnson has been slowly losing his cool over Brexit and lost it, just a little bit, when addressing Tory activists at the Conservative Way Forward on Wednesday. It was a candid speech but, with recording devices built into every smartphone, it was hardly surprising that it should have leaked. Perhaps BoJo, fed up with Theresa May's Brexit backsliding, wanted it to leak. The Times and BuzzFeed have the story, and here are the best quotes. On HM Treasury "What they don’t want is friction at the borders. They don’t want any disruption. So they’re sacrificing all the medium and long-term gains amid fear of short-term disruption . . .

Poor old Jeremy Corbyn. You couldn’t blame the Labour leader for harbouring hopes that the upcoming Labour Live event would enable him to emulate the wild adulation he received on stage at last year’s Glastonbury. But whereas tens of thousands of festival goers chanted Corbyn’s name back then, it seems more likely that Jez will be appearing on stage in north London next Saturday in front of one man and his dog – if he's lucky. In a desperate bid to drum up numbers, tickets – and free coach travel – are apparently being given away for free. Perhaps unsurprisingly, though, this news is going down badly with those who made the mistake of buying their tickets early.

It’s fair to say that there is no love lost between Philip Hammond and Gavin Williamson. The chancellor and defence secretary have been sniping at each other for months – and there were claims that the rivalry between the pair even escalated into a full-blown row in the Commons in December, with Theresa May forced to intervene. The tensions between the two have shown no signs of settling down since. But now Philip Hammond is no longer alone in his battle against his cabinet rival. His old school mate, Richard Madeley, is giving his fellow Essex boy a helping hand. Madeley – who attended the same school as Hammond back in the 70s – famously 'terminated' Williamson in a TV interview last week after the defence secretary repeatedly refused to answer a question.

Gavin Williamson is the unfortunate victim of the Parliamentary recess. With little in the way of political news, the Defence Secretary's awkward exchange with Richard Madeley over his 'shut up and go away' Russia comment has received a lot of attention. Now the Good Morning Britain presenter has decided to prolong Williamson's turmoil a bit longer by penning a Guardian deep dive on the interview: Madeley says that he was keen to ask Williamson about his un-statesmanlike Russia comments as he was rather unimpressed by them at the time: 'I freely admit that I was one of those who thought Gavin Williamson’s “Shut up and go away” instruction to the Kremlin after the Salisbury nerve-agent attack was risible. Defence secretary as petulant pre-adolescent. Not a good image.

Oh dear. It's six months since Philip Hammond stood up in the Autumn Budget and announced a new railcard for those aged 26-30 'giving 4.5m more young people a third off their rail fares'. Yet the millennial railcard remains a near mythical artefact – with a mere 10,000 released on the day of the official 'national' launch. It's understood the delay is down to a row over who should pay for them. The Treasury had hoped they would be a cost neutral policy but Network Rail aren’t convinced so it is being slowly trialled – and in the short term the Treasury don’t want to be landed with a bill while everything is worked out. Now it seems even Tory MPs are growing tired of the delay.

Boris Johnson has been caught in a prank call by a pair of Russian comedians posing as the Armenian prime minister. The Foreign Secretary is recorded discussing Russia's involvement in the poisoning of Sergei Skripal and offering tips to the pranksters on how to deal with Vladimir Putin. In a recording of the phone conversation posted on YouTube, Boris tells one of the duo: 'We don't want a cold war but we do want to see an improvement in the way Russia behaves' After an 18-minute discussion, the call ends abruptly. The Foreign Office has confirmed that the recording is of Boris Johnson. So, how did this security breach come to be? Steerpike understands that the hoaxer first made contact not with Johnson but with Foreign Office minister Alan Duncan.