Steerpike

The UK’s king of virtue signalling has served up another blinder. Gary Lineker has joined 119 fellow millionaires in signing an open letter calling on Andy Burnham to raise their taxes. The smug-fest, organised by the tediously grandstanding campaign group Patriotic Millionaires, declared: ‘We can afford it. We're not talking about higher taxes on those who get up and go to work for their income every day, but on the very richest whose income is derived from the wealth they hold.’ Curiously, while promoting his valiant plea to surrender more of his fortune, dear Gary neglected to mention that as recently as March 2023 he took HMRC to a tribunal over a disputed £4.9 million tax bill.

https://twitter.com/stellacreasy/status/2079596796498636827 You may have thought it nigh-on impossible, but Stella Creasy has outdone herself today. The lefty Labour MP posted a video on X showcasing what she believed to be an escaped pet parrot in a Walthamstow park. Turning the camera on herself, Creasy declared: ‘If you have lost a parrot, not a parakeet, there is a parrot on the loose in Lloyd Park. If you’ve lost an actual parrot, because it’s too big to be a parakeet, it’s in Lloyd Park right now.’ Alongside the bizarre video, she posted: Walthamstow has anyone lost a parrot? There’s one in Lloyd park right now! Please share to help reunite it with its owner!

Andy Burnham has made moving civil servants oop North a key plank of his promise to revive prosperity across the country. But the great mandarin migration is hardly a novel idea – and, if attendance figures are anything to go by, relocating our intrepid public servants has not exactly worked wonders so far. Take the MHCLG campus in Darlington. Figures for the most recent working week available show that only 44 per cent of staff assigned to the office actually turned up in person. That equates to 74 people out of a total assigned workforce of 168. Then there is the UK Statistics Authority quango and its various non-London campuses. How, Mr S hears you ask, is attendance looking there?

Taking a leaf out of Jeremy Corbyn’s playbook, Andy Burnham today used his first pledge as Prime Minister to promise an end to rough sleeping in Britain. It was Jezza’s dream to make such an announcement from the steps of No. 10, but the new MP for Makerfield got there first. There is, however, one glaring problem with Burnham’s grand vow: he does not exactly have the finest record on tackling homelessness. In his 2017 Manchester mayoral manifesto, the now-Prime Minister pledged to end rough sleeping by 2020 – only to admit in 2019 that the target would be missed. Far from eliminating the problem, in fact rough sleeping in Greater Manchester has risen for four consecutive years.

https://twitter.com/sdphq/status/2078102425106583729?s=48&t=iNz_e1VP6R_ERWsNA9_Yjg While the mainstream parties have refused to contest the Clacton by-election, one long-suffering fringe outfit has decided to join Count Binface in the race against Nigel Farage. William Clouston, leader of the Social Democratic Party – remember them? – today announced that he will have a crack at the constituency. In a video posted on social media, he said: I think it’s wrong that the major parties are boycotting this election because the people of Clacton deserve a better choice than Binface or Nigel Farage. And now they will. The SDP will make its case: Britain is not a shop or a charity, it’s our home. We must save and invest and rebuild our country.

https://twitter.com/annaroseridgway/status/2077676558169289202 Oh dear. Liz Truss’s CPAC Great Britain bonanza does not appear to have got off to quite the flying start she envisaged. Images from the InterContinental London – The O2, along with testimony from those inside, suggest the conservative jamboree is proving rather less Reagan and rather more relegation. Attendees have been struck by the emptiness of the main auditorium, while the corporate stalls have hardly been doing a roaring trade. The American-style flashing lights and thumping music have failed to summon the masses, with several observers noting that there appear to be more hacks in the room than genuine delegates.

https://twitter.com/mattforde/status/2077395665442034128 Westminster is choc-a-bloc with MPs trying to outdo one another in nauseating displays of virtue signalling. But for truly hilarious examples of performative outrage, it is useful to also cast one’s gaze towards good old Brussels. At a recent meeting of the European Parliament’s Foreign Affairs Committee, Sinn Féin MEP Lynn Boylan was forced into an excruciating climbdown after her grandstanding did not quite go to plan. Boylan, naturally draped in a keffiyeh-patterned lanyard, complained to her international colleagues: ‘It's unfortunate that we can't use our own language in this committee, but I will continue now in English.

Roll up, roll up – it’s that deeply depressing time of year once again. The BBC has today published its annual list of obscenely overpaid employees, a chart dominated by so-called ‘stars’ from news, sport and radio. Topping the list – before he was sacked in March over historical sexual offence allegations – is former Radio 2 breakfast show host Scott Mills. He was fortunate enough to pocket a whopping £750,000 from licence fee payers. Greg James comes second on an eye-watering £440,000. Then we move on to news. In third place, Radio Ulster and 5 Live presenter Stephen Nolan rakes in £425,000, followed by Laura Kuenssberg on £405,000. A little further down the list, Radio 4’s Justin Webb makes an appearance with a handsome £375,000 salary.

Kemi Badenoch today set out to prove that she means business when it comes to clearing out the Tory has-beens and wets. The Conservative leader announced that, following a leave of absence from the House of Lords, wetter-in-chief Gavin Barwell will not have the whip restored. The former chief of staff to Theresa May sparked fury after repeatedly accusing Badenoch of turning her party into a ‘Reform tribute act’. Barwell also goaded the Tory leader over what he called her ‘poor strategic judgment’, particularly her rejection of net zero and pledge to leave the ECHR. In a letter to the former housing minister this evening, first revealed by the Mail, Badenoch said: Robust debate and differences of opinion have always been part of our Party's tradition.

One of the hottest debates in Westminster today is whether Nigel Farage’s decision to quit as an MP and trigger a by-election was an act of political genius or a stubborn blunder. Reform is confident the gamble will pay off, leaving its leader stronger than before. Others are less convinced, arguing that the boycott by every contender except Binface has turned the whole exercise into a giant farce. But what does the great British public make of it all? New polling by Opinium for The Spectator reveals that 44 per cent of adults believe Farage was right to resign and stand again in a by-election, while only 31 per cent say it was the wrong thing to do.

https://twitter.com/andyburnham/status/2075157937744441661 Andy Burnham has taken an incredibly enthusiastic approach to social media – so much so that he seems to spend more time answering questions on Reddit than he does from journalists. It’s fair to say the MP for Makerfield’s digital output has been far superior to that of Sir Keir Starmer. His videos are slicker, more entertaining and have a quality of authenticity that the outgoing Prime Minister’s categorically do not. But now it seems poor Andy may be riding the social media wave a little too hard and fast. At 11 a.m.