Steerpike

Ping! An email arrives in Steerpike's inbox. It seems that the Tony Blair Institute – the eponymous creature of the perma-tanned politician – has gone on a bit of a recruitment drive. Not content with having, in their words, '100 staff embedded in governments around the world', Blair's babes have now bagged themself a general and top scientist too. How long before they add an Archbishop? For this week, Sir Tony's Institute proudly announced that Sir Patrick Vallance, the UK's Chief Scientific Adviser during Covid, is joining them as a 'Strategic counsellor' alongside Sir Nick Carter, the former Chief of the Defence Staff. All those knights, let's hope they have a round table...

The Lee Anderson saga shows no sign of going away anytime soon. Five days after the Ashfield MP had the whip removed for claiming 'Islamists' had 'got control' of the Mayor of London, Tory ministers are still tying themselves in knots over how best to elegantly distance themselves from their now-suspended colleague. Prime Minister Rishi Sunak has declared that what Anderson said was 'wrong' but his colleagues appear unable to agree whether his comments were 'Islamophobic'. The latest hapless minister to trip up is Michael Tomlinson, the man tasked with the immigration brief. Appearing on LBC this morning, Tomlinson was asked six times why it was necessary to remove the whip from the red wall Rottweiler.

After four straight election defeats, Labour are desperately keen to prove that the party has changed. Gone – supposedly – are the bad old days of tax and spend. Fiscal restraint is now the order of the day. The £28 billion in green spending has been unceremoniously axed; a commitment to restore the bankers' bonus cap duly binned too. No more will 'uncontrolled spending' be synonymous with Keir Starmer's party. So it must be to the chagrin of Labour HQ then that not all their frontbenchers appear to have got the memo about the importance of being trusted with the country's credit card. For Steerpike has been told by one of his spies that David Lammy's Amex card was discovered today outside one of Westminster's favourite watering holes.

The fall-out from Lee Anderson’s suspension continues tonight. With speculation still ongoing as to whether the Ashfield MP might defect to Reform, friends of the red wall Rottweiler are concerned that his suspension will, in the words of one, only ‘embolden the wets’. Such fears have only been strengthened tonight by a bizarre row breaking out in one of the Tory backbench WhatsApp groups.  It began when Sir John Hayes, chairman of the Common Sense Group, wrote in the aftermath of Anderson’s suspension that ‘the facts speak for themselves. Islamist extremism poses the greatest threat to national security and wellbeing'. It prompted Tobias Ellwood to weigh in and demand that ‘John – with respect – please delete that comment.

Oh dear. Lee Anderson has now lost the Conservative whip after refusing to apologise for comments directed at London's mayor. Appearing on GB News yesterday, the red wall Rottweiler declared that 'Islamists' have 'got control of London' and its mayor, Sadiq Khan. He told the network that Khan has 'Given our capital city away to his mates. I don’t actually believe that the Islamists have got control of our country, but what I do believe is they’ve got control of Khan, and they’ve got control of London.' It triggered a storm of criticism from the opposition parties, with Anneliese Dodds, the Labour chair, labelling Anderson's comments as 'unambiguously racist and Islamophobic'.

Where would be without Liz Truss? The blonde bombshell hit Washington DC this week to attend the great right-wing jamboree that is the Conservative Political Action Conference. Appearing alongside Trump election mastermind Steve Bannon, Truss told the crowd that she had wanted to cut taxes and the size of the state while in No.10, but 'the economic establishment in Britain wanted to keep things the way they were – they got me.' 'But I have learnt from that, Steve,' she said. Bannon then interjected: 'Hold on – was it the Economist that got you, was it the Financial Times of London, the City of London – are they the ones that run the deal over there?

Leader of the House of Commons Penny Mordaunt has backed Lindsay Hoyle in the row over the Gaza ceasefire vote – and accused Labour of picking on the Speaker. Mordaunt said Hoyle was a 'decent man' and blamed Keir Starmer's party for last night's debacle in the Commons. The Tory MP hit out at her opposite number, shadow leader of the house, Lucy Powell, saying: 'I would never have done to him (Hoyle) what the Labour party have done to him'. She added: 'If she cannot rise above narrow and immediate needs of her weak and fickle leader...perhaps she might like to reflect on the damage her party has done to the office of the Speaker.

The chaos of the Brexit days has reignited in parliament tonight. The drama broke out after Speaker Lindsay Hoyle selected a Labour amendment calling for a ceasefire in Gaza, despite the Clerk of the House’s warning that doing so went against parliamentary convention. Hoyle reportedly wanted to offer a wider debate, in light of concerns about MPs safety. In response, the government pulled its own amendment and the SNP joined in with the anger. The Speaker attempted to placate MPs by returning to the Commons to apologise – but sorry wasn’t good enough for some MPs. The SNP’s Westminster leader Stephen Flynn wondered whether Hoyle could stay in his job.

'Change Labour, change Britain' has been the internal mantra of the Starmer army since seizing the party leadership nearly four years ago. But while a 20-point lead suggests they've made considerable progress in that area, there are infrequent reminders of the not-so-distant Corbynite past. The Rochdale debacle proved to be an uncomfortable reminder of all that, with the Mail on Sunday reporting on 11 February the not-so-savoury views of Azhar Ali. Even more awkward perhaps was the fact that just five days earlier, Morgan McSweeney – Keir Starmer's election overlord – was boasting to fellow Labourites about the progress they have made in the field of, er, candidate selection.

An almighty war of words has broken out over the biggest political drama of the year. In the red corner is Henry Staunton, former chairman of the Post Office. He has used an interview in yesterday's Sunday Times to suggest the government deliberately tried to slow down compensation payments to sub postmasters. And in the blue corner is Kemi Badenoch, the Business Secretary, who has furiously hit back at Staunton, suggesting his interview was 'full of lies' and that she will 'tell the truth in parliament' later today. Someone get the popcorn in. Both Badenoch and Staunton claim they have contemporaneous notes of the phone call in which she sacked him, with both alleging different reasons for why this happened.