What a year it’s been for Steve Baker. In the space of 12 months he’s gone from Covid rebel ringleader to anti-Boris assassin; the ERG backbencher turned ministerial consensus-seeker. Along the way he’s raised a few eyebrows with some of his statements: defending ‘taking the knee’ at Tory party conference and apologising to Ireland and EU for the behaviour of him and his colleagues during the Brexit wars.
So Mr S was intrigued to see the Northern Ireland minister posing for pictures with the Muslim Council of Britain last week. The government has a long-standing ministerial boycott in place with this group, dating back to 2009. As recently as July, Downing Street restated that ministers should continue to boycott the organisation following controversy over a meeting with one of its leaders by Conservative leadership candidate Penny Mordaunt.
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