Steerpike

Oh dear. It seems that Zack Polanski is not quite the smooth-talking mega-mind that some on the left thought he was. The Green leader has been out and about, desperately talking up his party’s chances in the Gorton and Denton by-election. But, having ducked the chance to stand himself, the native Mancunian seems to have

It’s a day ending in ‘y’ – so that means another scandal for Keir Starmer’s beleaguered team. This time it concerns a lobbying firm run by an ex-Labour MP. Jim Murphy, the party’s onetime Scottish leader, now heads up Arden Communications which has lobbied Sir Keir’s administration on behalf of arms manufacturers, oil companies and

Andy Burnham may not be standing – but at least we know one man who is. With only five weeks to go until the Denton and Gorton by election, the race is now on to find suitable candidates to win the Manchester constituency on 26 February. The Greens are due to unveil their candidate later

The in-and-out movements of the Bravermans have been quite something to behold. This morning it was the turn of Suella to (finally) join Reform, with Nigel Farage confirming that he had been in on-and-off talks with her for a year. ‘I thought she’d already gone’, was the reaction from one Tory wag on the wet

Poor old Andy and those sad eyes of his. The Mayor of Greater Manchester has had a pretty rotten day, being blocked by his own party’s ruling National Executive Committee (NEC) by some eight votes to one. His sole backer was Lucy Powell, whose candidacy for deputy leader was memorably likened to Lurleen to Burnham’s

The Phoney War is no more. Former Labour minister Andrew Gwynne is on the brink of standing down as an MP, after losing the whip during last year’s WhatsApp group scandal. A by-election is therefore on the cards in Gwynne’s Manchester seat, potentially paving the way for the ever-ambitious local mayor Andy Burnham to return

Another one bites the dust. After Kemi Badenoch expelled Robert Jenrick from the Conservative party in Westminster, it seems that her Welsh counterpart Darren Millar this week wants to get in on the act too. This morning he released a statement on X, declaring that he expelled James Evans MS from both the Welsh shadow

It seems that Kemi Badenoch isn’t done with Robert Jenrick just yet. Tonight she is set to meet Tory MPs from both the 92 Group and the Common Sense Group. But before that, Tory apparatchiks have sought to finish what she started on Thursday when she sacked Robert Jenrick from the Shadow Cabinet, expelled him

It seems that Nigel Farage has not taken too kindly to all Kemi Badenoch’s talk of ‘cleaning house’. The leader of Reform UK has had his fair share of run-ins with different Tory MPs since being elected to parliament in 2024, even going so far as to call half of them ‘stuffy, boring old bastards’

Oh dear. With the right in civil war, Keir Starmer might have thought his week was ending on a high, after yet another U-turn – this time over digital ID. But his loose-lipped cabinet have done it again, telling the Times that they believe Kemi Badenoch’s dramatic sacking of Robert Jenrick ought to serve as a

It’s a treacherous business, politics. One day you’re the future Tory leader, the next you’re sitting on the independent benches with Ayoub Khan. But Robert Jenrick’s expulsion from the shadow cabinet has meant a spot has opened up at the top table for another leading light. To replace Jenrick as shadow justice secretary, Kemi Badenoch

Congratulations to the Met: you are officially no longer the worst run police force in the United Kingdom. The West Midlands force, led by their flailing chief Craig Guildford, are doing the damnedest to take the crown off Sir Mark Rowley and his London rozzers. The centre of the Birmingham controversy is the intelligence used

When David Lammy announced that the Chagos Islands were to be handed over to Mauritius, it was greeted as the moment when the sun finally set on the British Empire. But a group of hardy peers are determined to rage, rage against the dying of the light, by doing their damnedest to hold up the