Steerpike

Oh dear. It has only been 22 days since Peter Mandelson formally became Britain's Ambassador to Washington – and he is already causing controversy. As European talks over Ukraine negotiations raged over the weekend, up popped the Labour peer on ABC to offer his take on things. In response to comments by Marco Rubio, the Secretary of State, Mandelson insisted that: We need a very radical reset and it has to consist of the United States and Ukraine getting back on the same page and President Zelenskyy giving his unequivocal backing to the initiative that President Trump is taking to end the war and to bring a just and lasting peace to Ukraine.

Well, you can't say they don't try. With Europe still reeling from Donald Trump's oval office bust-up with Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky on Friday, over in Scotland the SNP have piped up to make their feelings known about the American President. Never ones to miss a chance to try and stay relevant, the party's leader John Swinney took to the airwaves to insist that Prime Minister Keir Starmer retract the invitation of a second state visit for Trump to the UK. 'I cannot see how a state visit can go ahead for President Trump to the United Kingdom, if President Trump is not a steadfast ally of ours in protecting the future of Ukraine,' Swinney told the BBC. Swatting away the SNP's clamouring, it appears Starmer is having none of it.

Dear oh dear. Just as positive polling had lifted the spirits of the Scottish Nats, news of their membership exodus will bring them crashing down. As revealed by the august paper that is the Scotsman, the SNP has lost more than 5,500 members in six months alone. It’s hardly what you want to hear when you’ve an election to fight in a year, eh? The Scottish journal revealed that, as of 31 December 2024, the party had just 58,940 members – down from some 64,525 in the summer months. Not that SNP figures are strangers to an exodus, however. In 2019, the party had a staggering membership base totalling 125,000. This decreased to 103,884 in 2021.

The Beeb is better at becoming the news than making it these days. The last fortnight has seen the corporation come under fire after a rather controversial Gaza documentary – whose child narrator was, er, the son of a Hamas minister – was first released and then pulled from streaming services. Now Steerpike has had sight of a rather interesting email sent by the corporation's CEO, Deborah Turness, about the whole affair… Writing to staff about the doc, titled 'Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone', Turness first admitted that these were 'turbulent times' for the corporation, before tacitly reminding her staff that when it comes to news stories, 'we have to get it right'. Talk about stating the obvious, eh?

These days, it's rare to find an MP who is consistent in his politics. So Mr S was delighted to discover on a trip to the archives that there is an exception to this usual rule. Rupert Lowe has served as the no-nonsense Honourable Member for Great Yarmouth since July 2024. Prior to his election as a Reform MP last year, Lowe was an MEP for the brief-lived Brexit party in 2019, which topped the European elections and toppled Theresa May. But, two decades before that, Farage and Lowe were candidates for rival Eurosceptic parties at the 1997 election: the former for Ukip, the latter for Jimmy Goldsmith's Referendum party. Steerpike has done some digging and found that some old leaflets of Lowe exist in the Special Collections of Bristol University.

Uh oh. Sir Keir Starmer made a big statement in the Commons today on raising defence spending – but before the Prime Minister could get started, his party faced a rather big telling off from the Speaker about following the ministerial code. As Lindsay Hoyle explained to parliamentarians, texts of ministerial statements should be provided in advance to the opposition and the Speaker. Slamming the party of government for first redacting parts of the text, the Speaker then attacked Labour over reports that 'some of the redacted information was provided to the media' and called for a probe into the matter. Oo er. Starmer was quick to apologise, insisting to Hoyle: Mr Speaker, can I begin by giving my word to this House that this was not given to the media?

Happy freedom day! Yes, that's right – after more than a month closed, the Strangers' bar in the Palace of Westminster has today finally re-opened. Peers and MPs piled in to celebrate the return of their beloved watering hole. But, alas, already there are reports that Strangers' will no longer be the fleshpot, following allegations of a spiking incident. First, there was PoliticsHome reporting that new rules means that the bar will now have a maximum capacity of 50 with a doorkeeper using a tally counter and unaccompanied guests being kicked out after 15 minutes. And this evening Mr S brings more sad news: pass readers are going to be positioned on the bar for the purpose of identity verification for those purchasing drinks for MPs and those buying drinks. Heresy!