Steerpike

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 to the Commons and make a leadership challenge against Keir Starmer. Let's hope the Westminster Tesco gets the extra popcorn in... Gwynne has been hanging around SW1 for almost a year, waiting to reach agreement on his gold-plated MPs' pension. A deal is understood to have been done, paving the way for him to disappear into taxpayer-funded obscurity. In his place could come Burnham – if he is able to get past the Labour NEC first.

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 cabinet and the party grouping in the Senedd. Millar wrote: This morning, I took the decision to remove James Evans from the Welsh Conservative Shadow Cabinet and withdraw the Conservative whip. I did so after being informed by James that he was continuing to engage with Reform representatives about the possibility of defecting to the party, in spite of his personal assurances on Friday that he had rejected an approach they initiated last week.

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 from the party and removed the party whip. Talk about no nonsense... At least five allies of Jenrick have had their membership of the Conservative party cancelled, following the defection of the onetime Shadow Justice Secretary.

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' at a Press Gallery lunch last year. Why don't you tell us what you really think, eh Nige? One Honourable Member who has attracted Farage's particulae ire is Sir Geoffrey Cox, the baritone barrister who sits for Torridge and West Devon. The former Attorney-General has hit the headlines in recent years for his outside earnings – including £75,000 from the Government of Mauritius for legal advice ahead of the handover of the Chagos Islands.

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 model for our poor Prime Minister. Perhaps Sir Keir lacks Kemi's confidence eh? In a series of briefings tonight, various ministers sound off about Wes Streeting, the omnipresent Health Secretary who is never backward about coming forward. One member of the cabinet told the Times that 'What he [Streeting] is doing is so obvious, he is repeatedly breaching collective responsibility, he is attacking Number 10, he is undermining all of us.

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 has turned to a man who backed him for leader in 2024: Nick Timothy, the long time tormentor of West Midlands Police. Timothy is both a newbie and a veteran: a longtime Westminster operator and the first of the 2024 Tory intake to join the shadow cabinet. Like many of the best and brightest, he served his apprenticeship in the Conservative Research Department and then did a longtime spell under Theresa May at the Home Office and then (briefly) No.

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 to make the decision to ban Maccabi Tel Aviv fans from attending a football match that took place at Villa Park in November. Such intelligence seems to have been in short supply. For Guildford has today been forced to offer a 'profound apology' to MPs after admitting that he had given them incorrect evidence on Monday about the decision to ban Maccabi Tel Aviv football fans. The reason for the error?

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 Chagos sell-out in the Upper House. Talk about teaching their elected equivalents a thing or two about the merits of proper legislative scrutiny... For a week after passing several critical amendments of the deal, the Lords were tonight at it again. The Upper House issued a rare rebuke of the Chagos Islands deal, passing a motion of regret that said the agreement 'creates uncertainty' over the future use of the Diego Garcia military base and 'imposes £35bn of costs' on taxpayers.

The Dark Lord is back. Peter Mandelson has resurfaced, four months after being sacked as US ambassador for his links to the paedophile Jeffrey Epstein. In his first interview with the BBC's Laura Kuenssberg, the Labour peer said he never saw girls at Epstein's properties, and declined to apologise to the late paedophile's victims for maintaining his friendship with the American because he was not 'knowledgeable of what he was doing'. Somehow, Mr S does not think that will appease those demanding Mandelson lose the Labour whip...

Three cheers for the House of Lords. Labour might be trying to pack Britain's second chamber with as many placemen as possible – but the noble peers are not going to take it lying down. For tonight, members of the Upper House inflicted yet another defeat on the government, this time over the deal to hand over the Chagos Islands to Mauritius. Talk about Labour priorities, eh? Peers voted voting narrowly in favour of renegotiating the agreement, to ensure that Britain would stop making payments if the island’s use 'for military purposes became impossible.' Lord Craig of Radley, the crossbench peer and former chief of the defence staff who tabled the key amendment, said that he felt the issue should be 'sorted out before we get into formal ratification'.