Steerpike

Well, well, well. Just days after MI5 alerted MPs and peers to Chinese espionage threats, it appears that Prime Minister Keir Starmer could be ready to give a Chinese embassy in London the green light. According to the Times, two Whitehall departments will submit their responses to the proposals in the next few days, ahead of the decision being made on 10 December. Despite warnings from intelligence chiefs about spying, and concerns about cables beneath the site connecting to the City of London, neither the Home Office nor the Foreign Office are expected to object – as long as the right ‘mitigations’ are in place.

Back to the Covid inquiry, where chair Baroness Heather Hallett has presented the findings of its report. The conclusions don’t particularly paint anyone in a good light and the report even claims that acting ‘too little , too late’ cost the country as many as 23,000 lives in England – although this figure is already being disputed given that, um, ‘modelling’ doesn’t establish anything. The report also suggests that lockdown could have been avoided altogether had social distancing and isolation been introduced earlier. Good heavens… Former prime minister Boris Johnson has been dragged back into the limelight too, after the report claimed that BoJo failed to tackle a ‘toxic and chaotic culture’ in No. 10 – and, it notes, even ‘actively [encouraged] it’.

Oh dear. As if there hadn’t been enough hiccups in the launch of new left wing group Your Party, it appears there has been another bump in the road. It transpires that Jeremy Corbyn has, er, not been invited to a rally on the eve of the conference hosted by the party’s co-founder Zarah Sultana. Awkward… Jezza’s spokesperson confirmed that the ex-Labour leader had not been asked along to Sultana’s Liverpool event – which has been described by Zarah herself as an ‘unapologetically socialist, anti-Zionist, anti-imperialist programme’. But while it has been sold as a Your Party rally, it is not an official party event – and its tickets are being sold through Sultana’s personal Action Network campaign. How curious.

It was all guns blazing from Kemi Badenoch today. The Tory leader has clashed before with the Guardian – most notably during last year's contest when she lambasted the paper's claims of 'bullying and traumatising behaviour' when serving in government. And the wokest outlet in all the West was firmly in her sights today when Badenoch gave her big economy speech alongside Shadow Chancellor Mel Stride. At her presser, the Essex MP was asked whether she sympathised with the Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood, who says that she has been called racist slurs and told to go 'back home'. She said that: Just this morning, I read this astonishing piece in the Guardian written by someone in this room.

Another day, another bad poll for Labour. YouGov research has revealed that a whopping 75 per cent of Scots disapprove of the UK government, with just half of those who backed Labour in 2024 saying they would consider voting for the reds again. But this doesn't necessarily spell good news for the nationalists: while 37 per cent of Scots would consider backing the SNP in a future election, more than half of the country is fed up with John Swinney's government. Oh dear… Polling carried out between 31 October and 5 November shows that, with just six months to go until the 2026 Holyrood election, the SNP is in the lead – with just over a third of Scots admitting they would consider voting for the party next May.

It has been another bad week for the government. Growth down to 0.1 per cent, a briefing war engulfing No. 10 and now the Budget plans in crisis too. So amid all the various dramas, one story has gone somewhat under the radar. Nine four-star generals signed an open letter to the Times – timed to coincide with Armistice Day – warning that ‘lawfare’ and the erosion of soldiers’ trust in the legal system is a direct national security threat. A warning Sir Keir would do well to heed...One of those leading the charge against veteran prosecutions is Sir David Davis, the veteran Tory MP. He secured an adjournment debate in the Commons, quoting the generals' warnings at length and adding: The Government would do well to heed those warnings.

Well that was jolly fun. Kemi Badenoch gave Keir Starmer an almighty pasting at PMQs, predictably lacerating him over the anonymous briefings about Wes Streeting. But – in fairness to Labour's forces of darkness – the Health Secretary has not exactly been shy about his future intentions. As he told the Guardian in June 2023, he has 'never been ashamed of aiming high and going as far as my talents will take me.' And now, an old clip is circulating on the Tory WhatsApp groups. It was filmed in 2018 and features a succession of MPs being asked who will be Prime Minister in ten years' time. Some of the predictions have fared better than others.

So. Farewell then Tim Davie. The BBC Director General undertook the first leg of his long goodbye tour today, speaking to some of his 23,000 staff in true Corporation style: on a call with the Director of Internal Communications. Talk about the personal touch. Over 35-minutes, Davie answered questions from the Corporation's (many) hacks about the 'tough few days' which he and others have endured. Having revealed that he turned to BBC iPlayer on Sunday night to 'try and find a bit of relaxation', Davie went on to turn his guns on the Beeb's opponents, saying: We are in a unique and precious organisation and I see the free press, I see the weapon and the pressure, I see the weaponisation. I think we've got to fight for our journalism. I'm really proud of our work.

There are just two weeks to go until Rachel Reeves' second Budget. Twelve months after telling the CBI that she was 'not coming back with more borrowing or more taxes', she is now planning to do, er, exactly that. All sorts of various measures are being tipped and touted in the newspapers. But the most eye-catching is clearly the mooted rise in the basic rate of income tax. No Chancellor has dared hike this since Denis Healey in 1975: a decision which was followed a year later by the infamous IMF bailout. An encouraging precedent... Reeves is a history lover, who loves to lecture on Harold Wilson and have pictures of past Labour giants on her wall. But while she is likely to repeat Healey's tax-raising tradition, she is unwilling to join him in having a tipple at the Budget.