Steerpike

It was a late-night showdown in the Commons yesterday evening. The terrain? Labour's Border, Security, Asylum and Immigration Bill. But while the legislation was passed – by Pyongyang-style majorities – on the back of Labour votes, a row has now broken out over whether the Tories or Reform were more effective in their opposition. Nigel Farage took to X to say that: Without Reform MPs there would have been no vote on Labour’s useless immigration bill tonight. The Tories did not intend to oppose it until we forced a vote in the House of Commons. Reform UK are the real opposition.

The BBC is back in the spotlight for all the wrong reasons. As the trial between the Scottish nurse Sandie Peggie and NHS Fife continues – after Peggie's suspension over questioning the use of female-only facilities by trans doctor Beth Upton – it seems that the Beeb can't quite seem to work out how to characterise its coverage. Mr S's spies have drawn attention to a rather odd change on the BBC Scotland website in an article covering the ongoing trial. Initially a piece was posted with the headline: 'Transgender doctor tells tribunal "I am not male".' The opening paragraph of this read as follows: A transgender doctor at the centre of an NHS employment tribunal has repeatedly insisted on being a woman after being called a man by lawyers during cross-examination.

Back to the assisted dying bill. It has emerged that the legislation's requirement for a senior judge to approve whether someone should be allowed to end their life has been removed over concerns about the toll it could take on Britain's struggling courts. An amendment put forward by Kim Leadbeater, the bill's sponsor, has now proposed that, instead of having a high court judge investigate each case, a panel of social workers and psychiatrists among others should oversee applications. How curious. It's certainly quite the turnaround. While Leadbeater has now claimed the changes will 'make the system even more robust', prior to her amendment, the bill's sponsor and her supporters were vocal proponents of the high court judge method.

Well, well, well. It transpires that four MPs suspended by Sir Keir Starmer for rebelling over the two child benefit cap have now had the whip restored by the Labour party. Today's move comes a fortnight after John McDonnell took to LBC to urge Starmer to row back on the decision, telling journalists that 'we've served our sentence, so I'm hoping we'll simply have the whip restored'. It is rather amusing, then, that McDonnell is among the three remaining politicians who remain suspended. Awkward… Rebecca Long-Bailey, Ian Byrne, Richard Burgon and Imran Hussain have been admitted back into the party after spending six months sitting as Independent MPs, according to the Mirror. But in a blow for the onetime shadow chancellor under Jeremy Corbyn, McDonnell has not been so lucky.

Uh oh. There's trouble in paradise as it appears the relationship between Sir Keir Starmer and Navin Ramgoolam is becoming a little strained. After the Mauritian PM told his MPs yesterday that Starmer had offered up a new and improved deal on the Chagos archipelago, the Labour leader was forced to fend off questions about the soaring cost of the proposal in today's PMQs. Now Downing Street has hit out at Ramgoolam over the issue – and even blasted his comments as 'factually inaccurate'. Shots fired… Speaking to parliamentarians on Tuesday, Ramgoolam claimed the updated offer would effectively double the £9 billion first offered to the country to take back the Chagos Islands and hand Mauritius 'complete sovereignty' of Diego Garcia, home to a key US military base.

To Westminster, where Prime Minister's Questions is in full swing. Sir Keir Starmer has delivered yet another tutorial in how to bat away difficult questions – on everything from his reported Chagos deal to concerns about Labour backing a new North Sea oil field to the rather curious matter of the Labour leader's vocal coach. It emerged in Get In, a new book about Labour's rise to power, that Sir Keir's vocal coach Leonie Mellinger visited the party's London office on Christmas Eve in 2020. At this time, the city was under tier four regulations while Mellinger's home city of Brighton was under tier three rules, prompting the Conservatives to suggest the vocal coach may have broken lockdown guidance to see the PM.