Steerpike

You know your brand is struggling when even the boss wants to ditch it. For it seems that hapless Humza Yousaf has 'done a Ratner' today by distancing himself from the increasingly-toxic SNP brand. With his party set to lose half their seats to Labour, the flailing First Minister has decided that now is the right time to freely confess that he has 'never really been comfortable' with the Scottish National Party’s name. In an interview with the BBC's Nick Robinson on his Political Thinking podcast, Yousaf admitted that he did not like the connotations of the word 'nationalist', suggesting that the 'national' in the SNP’s name could be 'misinterpreted'. Gosh, how could that ever happen to such a tolerant, inclusive movement?

Oh dear. It seems that the right-on Member for Walthamstow is wrong again. Watching the Rwanda Bill debate this afternoon, Mr S was struck by an exchange between Stella Creasy and former Home Secretary Suella Braverman. The latter was in full flow, decrying the indignities of Westminster's subservience to Strasbourg's judges when Creasy rose to intervene. Braverman duly paused her remarks on the importance of respecting the 2016 referendum result to graciously give way. So, what was the point that Creasy urgently needed to make? That, er, the ECHR was just like the defence alliance Nato: I just wonder if she could clarify, because she's got a concern there about a "foreign court". What does she think Nato is?

No. 10’s latest effort to convince Tory rebels to vote for its Safety of Rwanda (Asylum and Immigration) Bill has collided with that regular ministerial inconvenience, the independence of the judiciary. According to a report in Tuesday’s Times, ministers plan ‘to move 150 judges from the first-tier tribunal to the upper tribunal, the body that will hear appeals under the new legislation’. The newspaper said there would be additional training and extra pay for judges sitting on evenings and weekends. ‘This is designed to fast-track the process of considering individual legal appeals lodged by migrants,’ the paper explained. But there are judges in London and the Judicial Office speaks for them.

A tough week for Rishi Sunak just got even more difficult. For Lee Anderson, his own deputy party chairman, has tonight gone public to confirm that he will be voting for the rebel amendments on the Safety of Rwanda Bill on Tuesday. The red wall rottweiler took to Twitter/X after 24 hours of speculation about his intentions to confirm simply that: The Rwanda Bill. I have signed the Cash & Jenrick amendments. I will vote for them. These amendments seek to disapply international law from the Bill and curtail asylum seekers’ rights to appeal against flights to Kigali.

For all the talk of a Tory ‘war on woke Whitehall’, more examples just keep cropping up. In an article for Fathom Journal, Anna Stanley, a former civil servant, this week painted a vivid picture about the kind of counter-terrorist training which is being given to her colleagues. Stanley writes that she recently attended a Kings College London (KCL) course called ‘Issues in Countering Terrorism’. It was, in her words, a ‘deeply, existentially depressing experience.’ Examples were reportedly cited on how such educational institutions are delivering what Stanley called ‘politically biased, anti-government training, amounting to indoctrination’.

It would be fair to say that Sir Ed Davey has had better weeks in politics. Having missed PMQs this week due to family commitments, the Lib Dem leader decided that the best way of putting questions to bed over his role in the Post Office scandal to bed would be a time-honoured TV interview. Unfortunately his car-crash performance with ITV (who else?) means that they won't be going away any time soon. In the interview, released today, Sir Ed was repeatedly asked to apologise by Paul Brand for his inaction when the Horizon issues were brought to his attention, yet repeatedly declined to do so. 'I've said time and time again that I deeply regret that I was lied to on an industrial scale,' he said.

They say it’s a difficult change of gear when you leave government. Still, it seems Zac Goldsmith has had no problem keeping his foot on the pedal since he resigned last year, after complaining about Rishi Sunak’s ‘apathy’ towards environmental issues. Today, the former environment minister and eco-champion was temporarily banned from driving after being caught speeding on four separate occasions. Appearing in Westminster Magistrates’ Court, Goldsmith pleaded guilty to the four counts of speeding in Chelsea, Paddington and Twickenham between April and August last year. In April, he was caught doing 29 in a 20 zone on Chelsea Embankment. In July, he was 8 mph over the limit in Kensington.