Steerpike

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.

At long last, Simon Case has received his hearing date for the UK Covid Inquiry. The most senior civil servant in the country was initially excluded from the Inquiry for health reasons, but now that he’s back and fighting fit, the top mandarin has been told to appear in front of Baroness Hallett on 23 May 2024. Incidentally, it’s the same day that Paula Vennells is due to give evidence to the Post Office Horizon IT inquiry. The phrase 'dead cat' comes to mind… Case became the youngest ever Cabinet Secretary when he was appointed by Boris Johnson in 2020, but perhaps his relative youth made him a little too savvy at — and reliant on — advising by the new-fangled medium of WhatsApp. He’s certainly had his fair share of messaging disasters exposed by recent leaks.

Back to one of Sadiq Khan’s worst mistakes in office: Amy Lamé. The underwhelming ‘night czar’ is in the news again after Khan tried to persuade Londoners that the £120,000-a-year Lamé is worth the money. Speaking to Times Radio this morning, the London mayor was quizzed about the city’s failing nighttime economy. ‘New York is the city that never sleeps,’ said the presenter. ‘London is the city that likes to go to bed early with a cup of Horlicks.’ Scrabbling for a retort, Khan had barely found one before he was hit with the next zinger: ‘Why are you paying a DJ 120 grand to be a night czar? That's not value for money, is it?

In the midst of a new development in the never-ending motorhome saga, Humza Yousaf addressed a rather, er, sparse crowd at the SNP's 'national council' event in Perth today. With a speech that was much longer than it should have been, Yousaf spent most of his time lashing out at the Conservatives. Quelle surprise. 'We have the opportunity to ensure that Scotland is Tory free,' the First Minister told his devotees this afternoon. 'Not a single Tory MP left in Scotland. That is definitely a prize worth fighting for.' Possibly because he knows that trying to retain all his party's Westminster seats would be to fight a losing battle... But Yousaf didn't just contain himself to Tory-bashing. He quickly turned his attention to the real threat to his party: Labour.