Steerpike

To Whitehall, where Foreign Office staff are kicking up a fuss about the UK government's stance on the Israel-Palestine conflict. As the Times reports, last month over 300 civil servants wrote to Foreign Secretary David Lammy to protest the continued arms sales to Israel – blasting it as a 'disregard for international law'. The mandarins also criticised Israel's foreign minister's visit to London that took place 'despite concerns about violations of international law' and insisted the Labour lot's stance had led to 'the erosion of global norms'. Oo er. The letter didn't much impress permanent secretary Sir Oliver Robbins and his deputy Nick Dyer.

For years, Steerpike has been warning about the dangers of a new Chinese 'super-embassy' being built in Tower Hamlets. Located on the site of Britain's old Royal Mint, there are plans to build Beijing's largest overseas outpost, sitting opposite the Tower of London. Local residents, many of whom are Uighur Muslim, are viscerally opposed, while the Met has major security concerns about the site becoming a magnet for anti-China protests too. Quelle surprise... Having ignored all domestic opposition to this plan, pig-headed officials might now be willing to take advice from candid friends from overseas. This weekend, it was the Americans sounding the alarm in the Sunday Times, amid fears that the building could effectively become a nest of spies in the heart of London.

Oh dear. It sounds as though Rachel Reeves was something of a bust at the big CBI shindig last night at the swish 8 Northumberland Avenue venue in central London. It was barely seven months ago that the Chancellor confidently promised the lobby group in the same room that 'We’re not going to be coming back with more tax increases, or indeed more borrowing.' But this evening, the Treasury minister told those same business leaders in a Q&A that: Look, I'm never going to have to repeat a budget like that. You know, that was a big tax raising budget. I recognise that. It is what I felt that we had to do to secure our public finances... People need to know that we're never going to repeat anything on that scale.... we will never have to repeat anything like that again. Hmm.

Tree-hugging isn't just for the Greens, it seems – as former Tory leadership contender James Cleverly will insist this evening. At a London event tonight, the ex-Foreign Secretary will make the case that Conservatives should care about the climate and urge his colleagues to reject 'both the luddite Left and the luddite Right' on green policy. 'Conservative environmentalism doesn't mean a choice between growth and sustainability,' Cleverly will tell the Conservative Environment Network tonight in a dig at both the Labour government and Reform UK. The former Cabinet Secretary will speak this evening at the annual Sam Baker Memorial Lecture – where he will award Tory MP Andrew Griffith for championing the marine environment of Chagos.

Dear oh dear. Mr S offers his condolences to anyone who tuned into Defence Secretary John Healey's car crash interview with LBC's Nick Ferrari this morning. The Labour man stumbled his way through a rather excruciating conversation, in which Ferrari took him to task over his defence plan's figures. Starting on submarines, the LBC host quizzed Healey on whether the UK government's defence plans were cast-iron commitments or merely aspirations: 'You talk about the nuclear submarines and to develop 'up to' 12. What does 'up to' mean? That could mean one.' JH: These are… long-term decisions first of all. NF: How many is it, Secretary of State? I could lose up to 30 pounds of weight – but I might lose six ounces. This is the reality. So what does 'up to' mean?

Sir Keir Starmer's Labour lot are in the bad books with Speaker Lindsay Hoyle after details of the government's Strategic Defence Review mysteriously appeared in several newspapers before the Prime Minister's speech this morning. The Speaker was rather unimpressed with the whole thing – given he has had to remind Starmer's army on multiple occasions that it is a breach of the ministerial code – and today tore into the PM's party. Blasting the leaks as 'regrettable', Hoyle dressed down the government benches: The Prime Minister made a speech and held a press conference in Glasgow. In addition to other media appearances, this follows several days of media briefing. I am disappointed once again that the government appears to have breached the principle set out in paragraph 9.

To Scotland, where once Britain’s greatest schools were found. These days, sadly, that can no longer be said, thanks to the SNP’s mismanagement over the past 18 years in office. One of those who served as a minister in its wretched regime was Ash Regan, who held the Scottish Government’s Community Safety brief from 2018 to 2022. Having failed to win the party leadership in 2023, she now sits as an MSP in the Alex Salmond fan club that is the Alba party.  Her latest Holyrood initiative is to restart the debate on prostitution north of the border. Regan is championing a new ‘Prostitution (Offences and Support) (Scotland) Bill’ which aims to criminalise the buying of sex in Scotland while decriminalising those selling sexual services.

Another day, another bit of bad press for the Labour party. Attorney General Lord Hermer sparked outrage when he compared political threats to leave the ECHR to the Nazis during a speech to the Royal Institute for International Affairs (RUSI) defence think tank on Thursday – and has since acknowledged, rather begrudgingly, that his 'choice of words was clumsy'. You don't say! Mr S is rather curious about who exactly gave the controversial phraseology the green light – if it was approved at all. The speech appeared on the official government website after it was delivered, with the Attorney General's baffling comparison retained in black and white.

To Liverpool, where former Royal Marine Paul Doyle has been charged over the car crash that injured almost 80 people on Monday. Police announced they had taken a 53-year-old white British man into custody within hours of the attack and this afternoon, officers announced at a presser that Doyle had been charged with two counts of wounding with intent, two counts of causing grievous bodily harm with intent, two counts of attempted grievous bodily harm with intent and one count of dangerous driving. Reports note that 79 people – including four children – sustained injuries in the incident that took place during Monday's Premier League victory celebrations. Two people, including a child, were seriously hurt while 50 others needed hospital treatment.