Steerpike

Can Keir Starmer get anything right? Just days after yet another U-turn on digital ID, it now seems that his flagship 'Hillsborough law' will provoke a Labour rebellion too. The bill is designed to impose a legal duty on public officials to act truthfully and support investigations into the state to ensure wrongdoing is not concealed. But controversy centres on how the legislation will be applied to the intelligence services. Campaigners claim that a government amendment before the Commons could allow security officials to 'hide serious failures behind a vague claim of national security'. Now, Andy Burnham has joined the backlash.

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'.

Oh dear. It seems that all is not well in the party of good comrades. The Americans' stunning snatch-and-grab operation in Venezuela has divided opinion among Labour MPs. Jeremy Corbyn may no longer be running the show – but it seems some still mourn the ending of Maduro's regime. Among them was Richard Burgon, Jezza's onetime business spokesman. The hard-of-thinking socialist reacted with fury to Keir Starmer's mealy-mouthed statement, tweeting that: The Prime Minister should respond to an illegal bombing and kidnapping by Trump in exactly the way he would if Putin had carried it out. Either Keir Starmer believes in international law - or he doesn’t. You can't pick and choose. Time to stand up to Trump’s gangster politics!

So. Farewell then 2025. The Chinese Zodiac calendar called this 'The Year of the Snake' – and my goodness Westminster has had more than its fair share these past 12 months. Such is the level of one-way traffic from the Tories to Reform that even the Labour party press office struggles to keep count of the number of defective, sorry, defector, onetime Tory MPs now changing sides. Abroad, hurricane Trump has blown through the world, hurling tariffs aplenty, sending Europe into a spin, refashioning the Middle East and upending elections in Canada and Australia too. At home, we have endured the continued flounderings of our less-than-inspiring PM, whose plummeting approval ratings were the one constant for Labour in 2025. Surely, it can't get any worse next year?

It is the season of goodwill to all men. So, in the spirit of brotherly love, Reform staff have today made a kindly Christmas gesture to their Tory rivals. Two removal vans rocked up at Conservative Campaign Headquarters (CCHQ) with an offer to help Kemi Badenoch's staff move out ahead of their expected departure from Matthew Parker Street in 2026. Unsurprisingly, the Tories are yet to take up Nigel Farage's team on such a generous offer... The 'Reform Removals' vans are billed as offering a 'premium removals service' for struggling political forces. 'Major movers for minor parties' is the slogan emblazoned on both sides of each van.

Once, the Liaison Committee was a must-watch in the House of Commons. But the Starmer super-majority means that the thrice-yearly gathering is much more of a snoozefest than it used to be. Two thirds of the 31 members are card-carrying Labour MPs, elected when the PM was at the (short-lived) height of his power in the heady days of summer 2024. Yet there are a few wise old birds who are ready to give Sir Keir a semi-decent grilling. Today it was the turn of Alistair Carmichael, the longtime Liberal Shetlands survivor, who chairs the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Select Committee. Picking up the baton from Labour's Cat Smith, he asked Starmer about why his changes to agricultural property relief were 'targeted' at family farmers.

Another day, another bad poll for Sir Keir Starmer's Labour party. With less than six months until the Scottish parliament election, pollsters are ramping up their research north of the border. The latest Holyrood voting intention poll to have dropped is from Ipsos Scotland, carried out between 27 November and 3 December, which shows the gap between SNP and Scottish Labour has widened further. Constituency voting data shows that the Nats are consistently picking up more than a third of the vote on 35 per cent – while Labour has dropped seven points since June to sit 16 per cent. Crikey! And that spells good news for Reform UK – whose Scottish outfit is continuing to pick up support across the country.