Cleverly takes a swipe at the Spartans

Christmas party season is in full swing and last night it was the turn of the Onward think tank. Old survivors and bright young things gathered in the Georgian splendour of the Royal Society of Arts to hear from star speaker James Cleverly. Though the mood in government is grim, the Home Secretary betrayed little trace of that, listing to assembled wonks, hacks and assorted grandees his colleagues’ achievements in office, including ‘doubling the number of immigration ministers’.

But it was a classical allusion that caught Steerpike’s ear when Cleverly sought to channel his inner Boris Johnson with a slight dig at the self-identifying ‘Spartans’ of the European Research Group. The Home Secretary told the room that ‘We need to have the resolve, the determination, of those Spartan warriors. This time I’m determined that, unlike the struggle of Thermopylae, we are not going to be destroyed – we are going to be victorious.’ Jolly good luck with that…

Across town, it was the turn of Cleverly’s opposite number, Yvette Cooper, to take to the stage at the Labour Together drinks with the Daily Mirror. The Shadow Home Secretary had the lefties laughing with her allusion to Cleverly’s private views about his government’s flagship offshore processing scheme. She joked that he ‘knows the Rwanda policy is batshit, Tory MPs are going apeshit and they’ll soon be in deep sh… ambles’.

All good fun – but who will get the last laugh when the Rwanda Bill is voted on tonight?