Steerpike

https://twitter.com/Tony_Diver/status/2066533745482404217 Poor Sir Keir Starmer simply cannot catch a break. Last week, what remained of his authority suffered another hammer blow after John Healey quit as Defence Secretary. He was quickly followed out of the door by the colonel-turned-Labour defence minister Al Carns. One Luke Pollard, the Minister for Defence Readiness and Industry, however, stayed on. While Downing Street would have been somewhat relieved that the entire team had not turned on the Prime Minister, Pollard made clear today that his continuing in the job is hardly reason for No. 10 to pop the champagne. In the Commons, he confessed that he is only still in post because Healey asked him to stay.

Not even the resignation of a respected defence secretary will stop one Sir Keir Starmer from ploughing ahead with his tumultuous premiership. Despite John Healey’s blistering warning that the Prime Minister is incapable of keeping the country safe, Sir Keir today vowed to take the fight to Andy Burnham should he triumph – as currently expected – in the Makerfield by-election. The Prime Minister insisted to the BBC that battling on without the confidence of more than half his party is 'not about personal vanity'. He argued: It's not about stubbornness. It's out of a very deep sense of duty. I was elected to serve this country notwithstanding the difficult circumstances, that is what I am doing.

People will say almost anything to win power. Sir Keir Starmer’s rise is a case in point. In 2020, he won the Labour leadership by presenting himself as a candidate who would preserve much of the Corbyn-era policy agenda. Once in charge, many of those promises were diluted, abandoned, or quietly reinterpreted. By 2024, he had done something similar on a national scale. Now, his rival for the throne has taken a leaf out of his playbook. Despite a Labour leadership contest not even having formally begun, the Andy Burnham seems to have no qualms about making constant breakneck turns on policies he advocated just months ago. The Manchester Mayor is also already spitting out swathes of new policies which he thinks will get Labour MPs – and the country – behind him.

https://twitter.com/tomhfh/status/2064331571981594814?s=46 The United Kingdom was yesterday hit by yet another horrific act of violence, allegedly at the hands of a ‘refugee’. At moments of such profound distress, the country naturally demands answers. The public expects its leaders to explain how the immigration system can facilitate the entry of individuals from regions of the world ravaged by war, where women are often treated as second-class citizens. Yesterday in the Commons, the unionist MP for North Antrim, Jim Allister, pressed Northern Ireland Secretary Hilary Benn on the matter of people from ‘alien cultures’ being granted the right to live in the UK.

With the weather improving, small boat arrivals look set to increase in the coming weeks. So what better time for Zia Yusuf, Reform's Home Affairs spokesman, to take a trip to the States to learn how the Trump administration has stopped illegal migration there? Yusuf is in Washington this week for meetings with congressmen, Senators and officials on behalf of Nigel Farage. So much for the relationship between the MAGA movement and Reform cooling eh? Yusuf has been among the most ardent enthusiasts in Farage's party for a plan to mirror the Trump administration's push for mass deportations. So he must therefore be delighted to be meeting members of MAGA – the Make America Great Again movement – as part of his bid to learn from Tom Homan, Trump's 'Border Czar'.

AI has taken the world by storm, and few workplaces have been immune to its impact. In the House of Commons last year, Written Parliamentary Questions from MPs and peers doubled compared with 2024. The Department of Health and Social Care saw a 97 per cent increase, with the Home Office up 92 per cent, the Department for Education up 97 per cent and Housing a whopping 101 per cent. And who was blamed for the rise? Had MPs and peers discovered a new zeal for seeking answers from ministers in the name of democratic accountability? Not quite, according to Commons clerks. AI, apparently, was responsible. Now, Mr S can reveal Parliament has deployed a new AI mechanism to crack down on MPs over-reliant on the very same tech.

With Rachel Reeves in the Treasury, many employers are having to make cut backs. But in the case of Reform UK, it is the exact opposite, with Labour's woes proving a great boost to Nigel Farage's fortunes. After topping the local elections on 7 May, Reform is now facing the challenge of having to hire scores of staff to run their newly-acquired offices in Cardiff Bay and Holyrood. Talk about the problems of success... But Mr S hears that the party has at last found a new man to run communications north of the border. After a veritable shellacking by elements of the Scottish press in last month's campaign, the man tasked with building post-election ties with the Holyrood lobby is Tony McGuire, the long-serving Scotland reporter at GB News.

Everyone’s favourite human rights aficionado is back at it again. Clearly not content with comparing critics of the ECHR to Nazis, Lord Richard Hermer has now suggested detractors of the foreign court want migrants to 'drown'. In an interview with Nick Robinson on his Political Thinking podcast, the Attorney General name-checked the Tories and Reform as cheerleaders for leaving migrants to drown in the Channel. Hermer had been responding to Robinson’s observation that parties of the right want to ‘round people up on the beaches and send them somewhere else’. To which Sir Keir Starmer’s close pal replied: I think what they mean by that is they let people drown in the water. And that is not a British way to deal with it. That is not commensurate with our values.

If you're not a fan of any of the current contenders for Labour leader, then why not try Darren Jones? Yes, that's right, if you're not a fan of the likes of Andy Burnham or Angela Rayner, then do not despair. After nine months as Chief Secretary to the Prime Minister, good old Darren now fancies a crack at his boss's job, if media reports are to be believed. Described by one Westminster wag as 'like Wes Streeting without the charm', Jones is one of those ambitious Labour men who has never been backwards about coming forwards. Unfortunately for the Rt Hon DJ, it seems that he has become the latest of this tribe to be afflicted by the curse of the Prince of Darkness.