Steerpike

Today marks the 100th day of the Birmingham bin strikes. The City of a Thousand Trades has been subjected to more than three months of refuse piling high on its streets while reports of ‘cat-sized rats’ feeding on the neglected rubbish have struck fear into Brum’s residents. Now Mr S can reveal what is known so far of the detrimental financial and social costs of the bin worker's strike… It was on 11 March 2025 that all-out industrial action kicked off after pay talks between bin workers and the city council broke down. Unite the Union bosses have claimed that changes to how rubbish is collected will mean that 170 workers will face an annual pay cut of £8,000 – figures that Birmingham City Council disputes.

To Cardiff, where a former Conservative politician has pleaded guilty to harassing their ex-wife. Katie Wallis, formerly Jamie Wallis who represented Bridgend from 2019-2024, today admitted to sending unwanted messages both over the phone and via voice note and will be sentenced next month. Wallis had been in a relationship with ex-wife Rebecca Lovell for over 15 years, before divorcing in 2024. The 41-year-old former politician – who became the UK's first transgender MP in 2022 – had lawyer Narita Bahra KC agree an eleventh-hour deal with the prosecution for a guilty plea, after first applying for an adjournment for a psychiatric report to show Wallis had experienced a 'psychotic breakdown' during the police interview.

Well, well, well. As Baroness Casey prepares to publish her review into Britain's grooming gang scandal, a rather curious speaker was invited on to Radio 4's 'Thought for the Day' this morning. Step forward, the Bishop of Manchester, Reverend David Walker, who told us that... This is not a pattern of offending confined to any particular ethnic cultural or religious group. I hope that the forthcoming inquiry will help us find ways to keep young girls safe from the groups of predatory older men, whatever their origin. But it is a natural human tendency to want to think that such horrendous crimes are only carried out by people who are not like us.

It’s been quite the year for Bridget Phillipson. The under fire Education Secretary is now regularly tipped as one of the ministers most likely to be moved at the next reshuffle. Her Schools Bill has been lambasted for its impact on academies while her private school tax raid is hitting the state school sector too.  Yet despite dire warnings about the impact of putting VAT on independent school fees, Phillipson seems indifferent to their fate.  For a Freedom of Information request by Steerpike has confirmed that she is yet to visit a single one in nearly a year in office. According to the Department for Education: Minister Morgan and Minister McKinnell have visited a private school in their ministerial capacities since 5 July 2024.

Uh oh. Chief Secretary to the Treasury Darren Jones has found himself in a tight spot after his Question Time appearance on Thursday night. The Labour MP for Bristol North West told the BBC audience on the issue of Britain's borders that 'the majority of the people in these boats are children, babies and women'. But it appears that data published by, er, his own government contradicts that claim… The government's official statistics for irregular migration to the UK state in black and white that 'since January 2018, 70 per cent of people detected arriving irregularly have been adult males ages 18 and over'. The document notes that in the same time period, 'just under one-fifth of(19 per cent)' of detected arrivals were children.

While certain government departments celebrated Rachel Reeves's spending review – Deputy Prime Minister Angela Rayner even threw a party the night before the Chancellor's speech – economists are not quite as impressed. In fact, the Labour Chancellor has been accused of 'making up numbers' in her big speech after offering up rather incoherent guidance on how departments would make savings. Oh dear… The director of the Institute for Fiscal Studies Paul Johnson insisted his organisation is unable to 'find any particular area of spending the government has decided it wants to withdraw from' except overseas aid – despite Reeves constituently claiming that the Treasury had looked 'line by line' at every department's spending plans in the zero-based review.

There were always going to be winners and losers in Chancellor Rachel Reeves's spending review and it appears that Sadiq Khan's London has pulled the short straw. The Labour mayor's frustration at the Chancellor deepened this week ahead of her speech today over fears that the capital wouldn't a sufficient cut of the government's cash. Today, that has proved to be the case: while a four-year settlement was announced for Transport for London, Khan has lamented that it is 'disappointing' there had been no promise made by the Treasury to 'invest in new infrastructure London needs'.

How much have political donors gifted to their party coffers? Well, the results are now in. Today's Electoral Commission figures bring some long overdue good news for Kemi Badenoch's Conservatives, who have come out on top: the Tories received a whopping £3.3 million of donations between the 1 January and 31 March 2025. In fact, Badenoch's boys in blue took £1 million more than the Labour lot who received £2.3 million, and over double the £1.48 million of donations Nigel Farage's Reform UK took. Talk about raking it in, eh? And the Tories have more than just the raw figures to boast about: it transpires that onetime Labour supporter and video game entrepreneur Jez San donated a staggering sum of £1 million this quarter.