Steerpike

'Apologies everyone and especially to our Leader' tweets Rachel Johnson after a very rude word appeared on her Twitter feed about the Prime Minister: Apparently the columnist and famous sibling was 'hacked'. Mr S knows how these things are: you go out of the room for five minutes and bam! your naughty sibling has seized your computer and written all sorts of cuss words under your name about some chap he doesn't like... https://twitter.com/RachelSJohnson/status/537283459895816192 https://twitter.

When food blogger and poverty campaigner Jack Monroe isn't appearing in Labour Party political broadcasts or writing for the Guardian, she's the face of Sainsbury's. Their website proudly boasts: 'Sainsbury’s is pleased to welcome food lover Jack Monroe, who will be showing us how to cook two delicious recipes with leftover chicken. Jack is a thrifty single mum who is known for creating delicious meals on a strict budget. She tests all her recipes out on her young son and shares them on her popular blog, agirlcalledjack.com.

The fallout from Emily Thornberry’s ‘snobbish’ photo of a flag-furnished house in Rochester looks like it still has plenty of gas. The house’s owner, Dan Ware, has travelled to Thornberry’s Islington house today in search of an apology. https://twitter.com/johnestevens/status/535779676632129538 Thornberry, who resigned from the shadow cabinet yesterday following a furious conversation with Ed Miliband, has said she is ‘more than happy’ to meet Mr Ware. Nonetheless, a quick glance at some of Thornberry’s ‘favourite’ tweets over the last 24 hours suggests she hasn’t exactly repented of her actions: https://twitter.com/EmilyThornberry https://twitter.com/EmilyThornberry https://twitter.

It seems the most exciting thing to come out of today's Commons press gallery lunch with Danny Alexander was the Chief Secretary to the Treasury's claim that George Osborne locks his fridge in the department. Mr Steerpike has never been afflicted by an attack of the munchies while lurking in that part of Whitehall but he had a quick word with a Treasury source, who informed him that the fridge in question is Danny's fridge too, sitting right opposite his office and that it's only locked at night (which makes Mr Steerpike wonder what Alexander was doing going through the Treasury larder at night when officials are so happy to deliver expensive burgers). Apparently it has always been locked at night, ever since the Coalition parties pitched up in the Treasury in May 2015.

Having walked across Afghanistan, governed a province of Iraq and written award winning books about his adventures, now Rory Stewart has delivered his own son: 'Penrith and the Border MP Rory Stewart has announced the birth of his first son - which he ended up delivering himself on the bathroom floor. Alexander Wolf Stewart was born at 5.30am last Wednesday. A press statement said he arrived so quickly that Mr Stewart had to deliver him before a midwife could arrive. It added: 'The birth went very well and the baby and his mother, Shoshana, are very well. We are so so immensely happy and proud. It is such a happy day.' What does the ambitious Tory do for an encore?

Of all the watering holes across the capital, Mr S knows full well that the Pig and Eye club is both the most elusive and exclusive. So Steerpike was curious to hear that the MI5 joint has apparently been forced to change its name in order to err on the right side of political correctness. Originally set up by spies during the Cold War in their then-headquarters on Curzon Street, the Pig and Eye was a place where secret agents could meet over a drink – or five – without risk of being overheard by the wrong people. Peter Wright wrote of frequenting it in his best-selling espionage book Spycatcher. The secret establishment is then said to have moved with the security service to Millbank when they relocated there in 1995.

Labour’s efforts to demonise the hostile anti-Ed media is working. At the Labour leader’s eighth ‘relaunch’ speech on Thursday at Senate House, every single question from journalists was greeted by boos, hisses and tuts. The Labour leader actually dealt with the smattering of questions about his latest leadership woes rather well, yet the crowd were having none of it. Party members even hissed the polite chap from the BBC, much to the acute embarrassment of Mr Miliband, who was forced to calm his crowd with a ‘come on now, it’s a fair question’. When another hack asked if Ed felt he had made any mistakes as leader, one passionate activist audibly spat out ‘yes, taking a question from you.

In his campaign to make every single member of the Conservative benches want to throttle him, the Speaker launched a bizarre broadside against Winston Churchill’s grandson Sir Nicholas Soames on Monday. Hansard reports the moment as such: Sir Nicholas Soames (Mid Sussex) (Con): Is my hon. Friend aware of the serial bad behaviour by the Co-op in my constituency and others in the south, where it is taking over pubs and converting them into shops, often on very unsatisfactory sites? The Ship Inn in Cuckfield in my constituency is uniquely badly placed to serve as a Co-op. Will he look at what he can do to review the article 4 direction scheme, and to give general instructions about where such shops should be sited? Mr Speaker: That was a splendidly detailed question.