Steerpike

If it's not Just Stop Oil eco-zealots causing havoc, it's the animal rights activists creating a fuss. Now it transpires that Peta (People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals) is on the warpath – about, er, paint names. Just when you think things can't get much weirder... Peta – which 'opposes speciesism, a human-supremacist worldview' – has hit out at the prestigious decorating firm of Farrow & Ball over the names of some of its high-end colourants. Criticising the company for the names given to certain shades – Dead Salmon and Smoked Trout being some of the most contentious pigments – Peta has demanded that the firm consider 'updating' the names to more 'vegan-friendly' options, in order to stop 'normalising exploiting animals'.

Oh dear. It seems that all is not well in Leeds. Former Tory MP for Leeds South West and Morley, Dame Andrea Jenkyns, has taken to Facebook today to slam the ‘insensitivity’ of the constituency’s new MP, Labour’s Mark Sewards. It seems that cross-party relations are only, er, souring… Jenkyns slammed her ‘classless’ successor for ‘gloating’ about his success, claiming he not only messaged her days after she lost her seat about office space, but actually turned up at her office and ‘upset’ her staff. Taking to social media to vent, Jenkyns fumed: Today, my office manager has just rang me, Sewards has visited my office, my team are still there working on the casework handover.

Whitehall has received a lot of attention of late, what with interesting civil service appointments prompting claims of cronyism. And now Mr S can reveal that the Tories are calling for a civil service probe – and a ministerial apology – over impartiality concerns. The shadow minister to the Cabinet Office, Baroness Neville-Rolfe, has today written to Lord Livermore, the Financial Secretary to the Treasury, over fears that he may have 'inadvertedly misled the House' after he was quizzed about whether a party political document was uploaded to the official government website. Oh dear... Lord Livermore was this month questioned about the publication on the gov.uk website of the Chancellor's statement on public spending inheritance.

As the UK Tory leadership contest rumbles on, north of the border the Scottish race is hotting up. Last week saw a rather dramatic few days in which four of six contenders called for the competition to be paused and the party's deputy leader quit her post after 'disturbing claims' about outgoing leader Douglas Ross emerged. It transpired that Ross attempted to shuffle out a prospective parliamentary candidate so that he could be selected to contest a Westminster seat in the 2024 election. The Telegraph report also claimed that the Scottish Tory leader wanted to ditch the top job over a year ago – and instead coronate current leadership candidate Russell Findlay. But despite the negative press, Ross remains pugnacious...

To Northern Ireland, where Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer has been speaking to reporters about emergency prison measures, the violent riots that swept Britain's streets and the response of the police. But during his interrogation by journalists, the PM didn't seem to be in the mood to entertain recent rumours that his chief of staff, Sue Gray, is becoming a disruptive presence in Downing Street. Touchy subject, Keir? In a rather curious Times piece, Gray was accused of 'subverting' Sir Keir's cabinet by 'personally dominating' negotiations about the proposed venue for the 2028 Euros tournament.

It seems that bad headlines run in Sue Gray’s family. After a week of newspaper reports suggesting that Keir Starmer’s chief of staff is to blame for the government’s ails, now it is the turn of her son to face the wrath of Fleet Street. Liam Conlon, who was elected last month as the MP for Beckenham and Penge, has quickly been earmarked as one to watch. Within days of his election, he was appointed as a parliamentary private secretary at the Department for Transport. Talk about a rapid rise: perhaps he knows someone at the top? Unfortunately for Conlon, his new appointment has landed him in a spot of bother with the Mail on Sunday.

Prison is supposedly a place for wrongdoers to repent and reform – but it seems that even the staff inside are no angels themselves. After a female Wandsworth prison guard was suspended in July for a viral video of her, er, engaging with an inmate, Mr S did some digging into how widespread this phenomenon this really is. And Steerpike can reveal that dozens of prison officers have faced disciplinary action for ‘inappropriate relations’ with inmates or ex-offenders – with 65 probed since 2018 alone. Talk about the screws, eh? This figure was provided by the Ministry of Justice in respond to a Freedom of Information request by The Spectator and includes prison officers, supervising officers, and custodial managers on salary bands 3-5.