The SNP’s deputy leader in Westminster, Mhairi Black, has announced she is stepping down at the next election. Speaking to Emily Maitlis on the News Agents, Black claimed the “toxic environment” of Westminster has taken its toll on her “body and mind“:

“I’m tired, is a big part of it. And the thing that makes me tired is Westminster. I think it is one of the most unhealthy workplaces that you can ever be in, it’s a toxic environment… it’s definitely a poisonous place…”

She became the deputy leader of the SNP’s Westminster group in December, and has now thrown in the towel because Parliament “gives [her] the ick“. According to UK Polling Report, she was set to hold onto her seat:

Although given the chaos within the SNP this year, it was no guarantee…

As Gary Lineker’s off-side remark about the government’s immigration agenda brings BBC bias back into focus, the hosts of the News Agents podcast have had their say. Because who better to speak on impartiality than someone who was repeatedly found to have breached the rules.

Jon Sopel first chimed in that when he was abroad in America covering Trump “I was given huge amounts of latitude to call it as I saw it” – and BBC bosses backed him for it. No surprises there.

Lewis Goodall then shared his views, first claiming the Tories have succeeded in making sure “impartiality only goes in one direction”. He then spoke about Robbie Gibb, saying he made his life “very difficult”. Lewis complains that people would warn him that “Robbie’s watching you” because they “created this confection that somehow I was Labour supporting”. In the very next sentence, Lewis then admitted he was Labour-leaning.

Of course, Robbie would have been more than justified to keep an eye on Lewis. Whilst at Newsnight, he penned an anti-government front-page piece for the New Statesman – a flagrant breach of the BBC’s guidelines. He was considered a hostile opponent by Boris’ operation. At Sky, he was able to publish a long anti-Boris article and he used to work for the lefty think tank IPPR. Lewis was forever going over the top on Twitter and having to delete tweets when he remembered he was supposed to be impartial. Yet somehow it was the BBC that “created this confection”. Considering Lewis’ background, being indirectly told to take care with the editorial direction of his content hardly seems like the “crazy” approach to impartiality he was keen to describe.

Netflix has announced the cast for its upcoming dramatisation of Emily Maitlis’s infamous Prince Andrew interview for Newsnight. Based on Scoops, the memoir by interview producer Sam McAlister, Maitlis will be played by Gillian Anderson, with Billie Piper featuring as McAlister and Rufus Sewell starring as Prince Andrew himself. The film begins shooting later this month. Some strong resemblances…

Guido highly recommends the latest episode of the News Agents. Released last night, it features Emily Maitlis breaking the Guinness World Record for cognitive dissonance, as she opens the show by comparing Just Stop Oil to the suffragettes and Rosa Parks… and ends it by reading a Virgin Atlantic ad:

“It’s about the welcome you get, it’s about the customers, and it’s about people going… just an extra mile”.

That extra mile pumps out an average of 53 pounds of CO₂ into the atmosphere…

The news of Boris’s potential return to  Downing Street is annoying all the right people. Stephen Fry has gone viral tweeting in his usual twee way, “No @BorisJohnson no no no no no NO! Under absolutely no circumstances. Ever. Ever ever ever, d’you hear?”

Guido’s sure Boris will have taken Stephen’s opinion on board…

Emily Maitlis meanwhile learnt the Boris news live on her News Agents podcast. You’ll never guess her reaction…

Shouldn’t hurt Boris’s chances…