Steerpike

Uh oh. The Prime Minister hasn't been back from Easter recess for one full day yet and he's already facing bad news. In the latest poll of Tory party members by ConservativeHome, Rishi Sunak's net satisfaction rating has dropped to a new low of, er, -27.7. In fact, Sunak is the least popular member of his entire cabinet — with the exception of illegal migration minister Michael Tomlinson. It's not exactly a record to boast about... Sunak's score has dropped by 4.6 points since last month, and by just under 10 since February. There are now 12 ministers with negative overall ratings — and the scores at the top of the chart are hardly anything to get excited about. Up top is Business Secretary Kemi Badenoch, with a rating of 56.2.

Eighteen months have passed since Liz Truss left Downing Street and after an initial period of silence, she has been making up for lost time. In recent months, Truss has tabled a bill in parliament, launched her own ‘Popular Conservatism’ movement and even done the lecture circuit in the US. And now, at last, the former PM has released her long-awaited memoirs, detailing what went wrong in office and who is really to blame. Ten Years to Save the West sets out Truss’s philosophy for a better Conservatism and a better world – and the former Prime Minister has sat down with The Spectator’s editor Fraser Nelson in her very first TV interview about the book.

The question of how Israel will respond to Iran's attack dominated David Cameron's first broadcast round since he became Foreign Secretary last year. Immediately condemning Iran’s attack as a ‘very, very dangerous act in an already dangerous world’ on BBC Breakfast, Cameron added that ‘fortunately, it was a failure’. The Foreign Secretary told LBC’s Nick Ferrari that ‘Iran has suffered a double defeat: a defeat because they’ve failed, but a second defeat because the world can now see that they are the malign influence in the region’. But it’s not Iran that Israel should be focusing on now, Cameron believes: They have every right to respond and you’d understand that as an Israeli citizen, you’d be thinking ‘my country came under attack, we must respond’.

Uh oh. Reform UK has not had an easy ride with its general election candidates, to put it mildly. Richard Tice’s party has already had to drop ten prospective candidates for posting inappropriate comments on social media, including one who identified as a ‘pastafarian’ while another called for documentary maker David Attenborough to be ‘killed off’. It has now come to light that over 50 others were ditched for ‘complete inactivity’ — including York Central's Tommy Cawkwell, whose lack of campaigning was down to the fact that he was, um, deceased. A party spokesperson said today that Reform was ‘mortified’ for not knowing the RNLI volunteer had died, adding: ‘I can only apologise profusely for my mistake.

All is not well in the Harry Potter universe. Author of the hit wizarding novels and prominent women’s rights campaigner JK Rowling has revealed that, even if they apologise, she will not go easy on the lead actors of the Potter films for their stance on the trans debate. Less, er, expecto forgiveness and more expelliarmus…  Rowling’s comments come in the wake of the published report by top paediatrician Dr Hilary Cass, which found that ‘remarkably weak evidence’ and a ‘lack of high-quality research’ had allowed young people in the UK to change their gender. In a series of tweets, the acclaimed writer blasted supporters of gender-altering treatment in children and said they should apologise to ‘traumatised detransitioners and vulnerable women’.

Oh dear. Having his leadership questioned is becoming an almost-daily occurrence for Prime Minister Rishi Sunak. When he announced he was going to introduce a smoking ban at the Conservative party conference in October, there were people in his own party rather aghast at the proposal, with more recent talk of a rebellion on the issue. And now Sunak’s predecessor Boris Johnson has sided with the PM's rivals… Sunak wants to phase out smoking by raising the legal age for the purchase of tobacco by one year, every year, from 2027 onwards. But the health-focused PM is facing a backlash from his own politicians.