Steerpike

Sir Keir's frockgate scandal is only gathering pace, it appears, after a rather calamitous week for the Prime Minister. Donations received by both Starmer and his wife have been heavily scrutinised after it emerged at the weekend that Lady Starmer's gifts were not declared in line with parliamentary protocol. Rules for thee, but not for me! The PM received some rather, er, ineffectual backing from a variety of government ministers on the airwaves this week – including David Lammy, Yvette Cooper and Angela Eagle – but with the way the tide is turning, Starmer may soon long to be surrounded by his sympathetic, if gaffe-prone, supporters.

It's a gaffe a day with David Lammy. Now the Foreign Secretary has come under fire after he hailed Azerbaijan for being able to 'liberate' territory – in an ongoing conflict widely viewed as an ethnic cleansing operation – in a recent Substack post. Lammy took to his blog to express his unsolicited musings about the Nagorno-Karabakh region, writing: The states of Central Asia look increasingly east and south. Azerbaijan has been able to liberate territory it lost in the early 1990s. Georgia and Moldova are engaging with Nato and [the] EU. Crikey. Talk about bad wording, eh?

To Westminster, where more trouble is afoot. It now transpires the Prime Minister is paid less than, er, his own chief of staff. Sue Gray has once again made headlines after the Beeb revealed the former top civil servant has been given a salary of a whopping £170,000 – which is £3,000 more than the man in the top job. How curious... Gray's wage – higher than that of her Conservative predecessor Lord Booth-Smith, who earned between £140,000 and £145,000 a year – has sparked an uncomfortable row in government, with frustration amongst other advisers who believe they are being underpaid.

Back to the Foreign Secretary, who seems unable to keep himself out of the headlines these days. It transpires that as well as being rather gaffe-prone on the subject of international relations – having described Donald Trump in the past as a 'neo-Nazi sympathising sociopath' – David Lammy has today taken it upon himself to wax lyrical about the dangers of the climate crisis. In fact, the Foreign Secretary even appeared to imply that climate change is a more urgent threat than Vladimir Putin or, er, terrorism. Quite the comparisons to choose...

There’s trouble in Sir Keir’s Labour paradise, it seems, after the Prime Minister jetted off to Italy for a migration-focused meet-up with Giorgia Meloni. The PM is struggling to find a small boat-busting strategy; with over 800 migrants crossing the Channel to English shores on Saturday alone, Starmer has turned to his European allies for help. Meloni’s Italy has seen a rather large drop in small boat arrivals this year compared to last, with the help of a deterrent in the form of Albania – and the Labour leader is hoping to pick up some tips during his jaunt around Rome. Yet not everyone is particularly thrilled about the meeting… As Katy Balls wrote this morning, Starmer's trip has been met with howls of outrage from those on the left.