ANDREW PIERCE: Rishi Sunak's honours list dumps Kemi Badenoch

Is new Tory leader Kemi Badenoch, who has edged ahead of Labour in the polls, facing her first big electoral test?

With Rishi Sunak compiling his resignation honours list, Westminster is buzzing with rumours that he will give peerages to two of his most trusted allies: his former deputy Sir Oliver Dowden and Sir Julian Smith, a fellow Yorkshire MP.

This would necessitate two by-elections within months of the General Election, and cost the taxpayer £500,000 to stage.

The speculation was given added credence when Smith was overheard in the Commons tea room talking to a Tory peer about life in the upper house. 

I’m told Badenoch’s Shadow Cabinet is hopping mad at the idea of Sunak causing unnecessary by-elections. 

Smith held his Skipton seat with only 1,650 votes in July; Dowden won Hertsmere by just shy of 8,000 votes. Both men deny they will jump ship but many of their colleagues are suspicious.

Truth lands Jones in it

Is Chief Secretary to the Treasury Darren Jones about to be given media training? His Labour colleagues think he needs it. 

Jones blundered into an avoidable trap when asked on the BBC if employers, justifiably incensed about the huge hike in national insurance, should just ‘suck it up’. Jones, instead of parrying the question, replied: ‘Yes, it’s been designed that way.’ Cue another raft of bad headlines.

‘He’s too clever for his own good,’ wailed one Labour MP.

Sunak's former chief of staff Liam Booth-Smith made his maiden speech in the House of Lords last week. Peers were impressed the notorious scruff had put on a jacket and tie and spoke without notes. Less so that he kept his hands in his pockets.

Cushy job of the week: With universities begging for more cash, Jesus College, Cambridge’s, latest recruit, Noella Binda Niati, has been given a coveted fellowship, complete with the usual dining and residency privileges. 

Her work focuses partly on ‘non-formal educative spaces young people foster to counter sociopolitical inequalities through the lens of hip-hop pedagogy’.

Vital stuff, no doubt funded by your taxes!

The Bishop of Newcastle, Dr Helen-Ann Hartley, who precipitated Justin Welby’s resignation as Archbishop of Canterbury, takes an alpinist’s view of public life. 

In the House of Lords last year she said: ‘[Leadership] is like climbing a mountain: the higher you go the better the views but the more unpredictable the weather systems.’

Her Grace certainly brought on a cold front for Welby. Does she have her crampons affixed for a bash at the Canterbury job?

Get your own house in order!

The next time you hear a Labour Cabinet minister blaming the wicked Tories for the housing shortage take their propaganda with a pinch of salt.

New figures show that in the Labour stronghold of Camden in north London there are 415 ‘void’ properties (in the process of being relet) and 166 deemed too expensive to upgrade, which will be sold off – with thousands of people still on the waiting list for a council home.

Paul Tomlinson, a former Labour councillor, says the situation is ‘simply shameful’. He should take up the matter with Camden’s most prominent Labour MP: PM Keir Starmer.

Riposte of the week: My favourite response to the decision of Clifton Suspension Bridge Museum to withdraw from billionaire Elon Musk’s social media site X? ‘Cry me a river.’