Steerpike

In the two months since Lee Anderson's resignation as Tory deputy chairman, there's been something of a vacancy at CCHQ. Who could fill the gap left by the red wall rottweiler, to motivate the grassroots and energise the base? Well now it seems we have our answer: Jonathan Gullis, a close friend of Anderson and a fellow stalwart of the Common Sense Group. Gullis was last night handed Anderson's old brief, with party chairman Richard Holden hailing him as 'inimitable' on Twitter/X, adding: 'The non-stop campaigning MP for #StokeOnTrentNorth, #Kidsgrove and #Talke is a formidable addition to the team as we build to the General Election later this year.' The new deputy chairman himself declared that: I’m ready to take the fight to Sir Keir’s hopeless and hapless Labour Party.

To parliament, where the Commons is about to go into recess, again. Winding up this term's proceedings was Rishi Sunak's traditional grilling at the Liaison Committee. Back in the good old days of Boris Johnson there was mutual loathing between the Prime Minister and the various chairs of the select committees, some of whom were elected explicitly because they were Johnson's critics. But these days under top swot Sunak, the panel's session are much more staid affairs. The ninety-minute encounter proved to be something for a walk in the park for the PM as he eagerly displayed his mastery of the brief. Humour was provided, however, by William Wragg: the baby-faced chair of the Public Administration Committee.

It must be a hard job being the Metropolitan Police. Too hardline and you risk howls of protest from the left; too soft and you're lambasted by the right. So Steerpike is pleased to bring his readers news of a policing decision that will please all inhabitants of the Westminster village, regardless of their political affiliation. For six long, miserable years, Steve Bray – the Hiroo Onoda of the Remain campaign – has tormented those who work in and around Whitehall, blaring out music from his loudspeakers on Wednesday mornings before PMQs. But last week the artist known as 'Stop Brexit man' met his comeuppance after the Met sent some rozzers down to confiscate his sound set, much to Bray's chagrin.

Tough times for the Garrick Club, after the embarrassing leak of its membership list to the Guardian. Following the newspaper's front-page splash on Tuesday, multiple senior Establishment figures quit the all-male club. They included MI6 boss Sir Richard Moore, Simon Case, the cabinet secretary, and Sir Robert Chote, the former head of the Office for Budget Responsibility. Other resignations at the £1,000-a-year West End haunt are expected to be in the offing too. But never fear: one's man loss is another man's gain. And the man filling the space occupied by recent departees is none other than former BBC newsman Jon Sopel. He has just joined the 193-year-old club after 'a lengthy wait', according to today's Mail on Sunday.

Just when you think the woke wars can’t get more ridiculous, they do. It transpires that the Diocese of Birmingham is advertising for the role of ‘Anti-Racism Practice Officer (Deconstructing Whiteness)’ to work in a ‘racial justice’ team across churches in the West Midlands for £36,000 a year — and Justin Welby is not happy about it. The Archbishop of Canterbury has taken a pop at the job advert, telling Times Radio today that he rang up the diocese and asked them: ‘What on earth does that mean?

Should we expect a flash sale on Garrick Club memberships? The cabinet secretary Simon Case is the second high-profile figure to have quit the exclusive all-male club just hours after earnestly defending his position. The top mandarin follows MI6 chief Richard Moore out the door. The spy chief told his colleagues that he too planned to reform the organisation from within. But something apparently changed overnight that caused those noble ambitions to come apart. Talk about a fast turnaround... Case's resignation from the club comes after the UK's top civil servant attempted to make a compelling case for his membership only, er, yesterday.