Steerpike

When it rains for the Tories, it pours. Now Tees Valley’s Conservative mayor Ben Houchen has hit out at his party’s leadership – just 24 hours after yet another Tory MP defected to Labour. The re-elected Conservative mayor this morning admitted the path to Tory electoral victory is ‘getting narrower by the day’ before adding, in more bad news for poor Rishi Sunak, that ‘ultimately it all rests on the shoulders of the leader.’ Talk about trouble in paradise… In a series of damning remarks made during an interview on BBC Radio Tees today, Houchen seemed rather downcast on the topic of his party’s prospects. ‘Things don’t look great for the Conservative party at the moment,’ he told the station.

Another one bites the dust. The second Tory to defect to Labour in as many weeks is none other than Natalie Elphicke, MP for Dover. In a shock announcement just before Prime Minister’s Questions today, Labour declared that one of the Conservatives’ most hawkish MPs on immigration had defected to the Starmer army. Elphicke released a statement at noon, claiming that ‘under Rishi Sunak, the Conservatives have become a byword for incompetence and division’ and that ‘the centre ground has been abandoned and key pledges of the 2019 manifesto have been ditched’. Not really what Sunak wanted after last weekend’s dire local election results.

What comes around goes around. John Swinney has this afternoon become Scotland’s seventh First Minister after being appointed, unopposed, as SNP leader on Monday. It was a coronation event like no other – where Swinney was threatened by a contest from a rank and file activist within his own party after hapless Humza Yousaf paved the way to his own resignation. Now, the veteran Nat and former SNP leader has swooped into government from the backbenches in a move that some hint was a little more scripted than first thought… Today, Swinney faced off challenges for the top job from the leaders of the Scottish Labour party, the Scottish Conservatives and the Scottish Liberal Democrats in a ceremony rather, er, similar to one that took place just over 12 months ago.

And so we have it: a nationalist coronation, as yet another First Minister resigns. John Swinney, formerly Nicola Sturgeon’s deputy FM and onetime leader of the SNP himself, has been elected – unopposed – as the new leader of the Scottish National party. Thought to have been parachuted in by the party establishment, Swinney's coronation was almost foiled by 'flatulence in a trance' SNP activist Graeme McCormick who, by some quirk in the SNP's constitution, had enough nominations to stand against the MSP for the leadership. But, at the eleventh hour, the renegade backed down after having ‘lengthy and fruitful’ talks with Swinney himself.

The fall-out from the local elections continue. In the West Midlands, Labour pulled off a shock upset to unseat Andy Street by 1,500 votes. The Starmer army's triumph there was all the more impressive when one considers that the pro-Palestine independent Akhmed Yakoob finished third on 11 per cent. Yakoob, who won the votes of many traditional Labour voters in the Muslim community, was backed by George Galloway, whose Workers' Party of Britain is trying to cause Labour headaches across the UK. Invited on to LBC to speak about the result, Galloway clearly thought he would be on something of a victory lap. But his mood quickly turned sour after host Lewis Goodall asked him about comments he made during the campaign to Novara Media.

Back to London for the city’s mayoral elections – and the verdict is in. In a win for Labour, Sadiq Khan has been hailed as victor for an unprecedented third term with an increased vote share of 44 per cent, while the Conservative’s Susan Hall has been relegated to second place with a 33 per cent vote share. While Tory MP and former aspiring mayoral candidate Paul Scully criticises his party for running an 'incredibly underwhelming' and 'anti-Khan' campaign, the Labour mayor will be feeling rather smug today with a swing from the Conservatives to Labour of 3.2 per cent. Will Khan's third win mark the beginning of a new dawn for London? Call Steerpike a cynic, but the city's rather long list of problems seems to have only grown longer under the Labour mayor’s tenure.

The fighting talk continues over at Reform HQ as local election results continue to drip out. The Farage-founded party’s right-wing campaign has seen leader Richard Tice proclaim Reform UK is ‘rapidly becoming the real opposition to the Labour party in the North of England’. Tory defector Lee Anderson has even gone so far as to suggest he has a better chance of keeping his seat as a Reform MP than a Tory. But is the red wall Rottweiler all bark and no bite? The results of the East Midlands mayoral election would suggest so... Six local candidates stood for the mayoralty, with the vote taking place in Anderson’s own Ashfield constituency. In first place – by a margin of 1,500 – was Labour candidate Margaret Ward, with over 7,000 votes.