Steerpike

Sound the by-election claxon, Runcorn is a-go! Yes, that's right – five months after his kerfuffle on the kerb, Mike Amesbury has (for once) done the decent thing. In an interview with the BBC, the disgraced ex-Labour MP today declared it is his intention to resign from the House of Commons 'shortly' and trigger a by-election in his Cheshire constituency. It will be the first by-election of the parliament – and a chance for Reform to replace the gap left by Rupert Lowe. Amesbury told the BBC that he will begin the 'statutory process' of winding up his office before resigning as an MP 'as soon as possible'. He was last month given a 10-week prison sentence, suspended for two years, after he admitted assaulting Paul Fellows.

As the Assisted Dying Bill continues to make its unceremonious way through parliament, various medical organisations are making themselves heard. The British Medical Association has featured throughout the public debate, so Mr S was struck by one of the motions passed at its annual consultants' conference last week. Here, senior doctors vote upon motions relating to issues that either impact or are likely to impact health services in the UK. Motion 46 was proposed by the South Regional consultants committee and argued that Kim Leadbeater's bill raises 'serious potential moral hazards for consultants, and serious potential adverse impacts on health services.

Some good news for Kemi Badenoch today. The latest donation figures for the end of 2024 are out – and they make for happy reading for the beancounters in CCHQ. The Tories reported £3.8 million in donations between October and December, compared to £1.6 million for the Liberal Democrats, £1.4 million for Labour and £336,800 for Reform. When public funds are excluded, Badenoch's party raised £1.9 million in donations compared to £1 million, £685,000 and £281,000 for those led by Keir Starmer, Ed Davey and Nigel Farage respectively. Reform's sums included £100,000 from the financier and former Tory donor Roger Nagiof plus £50,000 from financial services firm JB Drax Honore, which has also previously donated to Tories.

Is Lindsay Hoyle turning into John Bercow? Mr S first asked the question in January after revealing that the Speakers' Office had doubled in size on Hoyle's watch. And now other outlets are running with the same theme, by looking at the Speaker's trips abroad. It seems the man of the people rather enjoys the high life, spending £180,000 of taxpayers’ money on top-end flights, luxury hotels and chauffeur-driven cars. Talk about putting that 'order order' in, eh? ‘Long-Haul Hoyle’ splashed the cash on £900-a-night hotels, first-class flights and even a private plane trip to the British Overseas Territory of Montserrat, according to Freedom of Information responses by the Daily Mail.

It’s a turbulent time for the Western world, but Sir Keir Starmer’s Labour government doesn’t seem to be taking things all that seriously. At least, not where its National Security Adviser is concerned. Jonathan Powell, Starmer's lineman on the Chagos deal, is apparently banned from speaking to the national security committee on the grounds he is a special adviser – yet it was the government who appointed him to the role in full understanding of the rules. So much for all that talk of transparency. Labour has rejected a request for Powell to attend a forthcoming evidence session – titled ‘The Role of the National Security Adviser’ – despite it being the case that every other NSA has appeared in front of the group.

As if transatlantic relations could not get any worse. Barely 72 hours after the Oval Office bust up, the Trump administration announced that the US had suspended all military aid to Ukraine – a move that caught much of Whitehall off guard. Now UK politicians of all stripes have hit out at JD Vance, after the Vice-President made some rather ill-judged comments on Fox News… Speaking to the broadcaster, Vance insisted that ‘if you want to actually ensure that Vladimir Putin does not invade Ukraine again, the very best security guarantee is to give Americans economic upside in the future of Ukraine’. But the VP didn’t stop there.

Graham Stuart is perhaps not the best-known Tory backbencher, but the former energy minister has catapulted himself into the national limelight with his remarks this morning. Stuart, the longstanding MP for Beverley and Holderness since 2005, took to X today to float the idea that President Donald Trump is an, er, ‘Russian asset’.  He wrote on the social media site that: ‘We have to consider the possibility that President Trump is a Russian asset. If so, Trump's acquisition is the crowning achievement of Putin's FSB career – and Europe is on its own.

There’s a drama a day in Westminster. Today's bust-up is between Reform MP Lee Anderson and the party’s former deputy leader Ben Habib who accused him of plagiarism. Following the jibe, the Ashfield MP took to Twitter to brand Habib a ‘pathetic little man’ trying to ‘smear’ Reform. And you thought Mike Amesbury was punchy… Early this morning Anderson posted online a long list of Labour failures – with the Reform MP claiming Sir Keir Starmer’s army would ‘never have been elected if voters had been told the truth’. While the politician’s post was lauded by his supporters, Habib was quick to spot a rather disgruntled reply from an account that had posted the exact same tweet several weeks before. ‘Does Reform UK endorse plagiarism?’ he fumed.

The extraordinary scenes that came from the White House on Friday were the talk of the weekend – and relations between Volodymyr Zelensky and Donald Trump remain under the spotlight this week too. As Sir Keir Starmer prepares to address MPs this afternoon on Ukraine, Reform leader Nigel Farage has this morning offered up his thoughts on the fall out between the two presidents – after their meeting last week took a rather unexpected turn… The mood of the Friday meeting between the Ukrainian president, Trump and JD Vance turned rather sour after the Vice-President hit out at Zelensky's attitude – eventually accusing him of being 'disrespectful'.