ANDREW PIERCE: Is Philip Hammond getting too cosy with tyrants? 

When the Kremlin tried to assassinate double agent Sergei Skripal in Salisbury, Philip Hammond was hawkish in calling for retaliation against Russia.

But is the former Cabinet minister going soft on hardman leaders now he’s retired from parliamentary politics?

While most Tory MPs back the Government’s tough line against Beijing following its crackdown on democracy in Hong Kong, the former Chancellor has warned against an outbreak of ‘anti-China’ sentiment. Britain should avoid weakening trade links with China, he told the BBC, and instead be ‘frank’ in private about our ‘strong differences of opinion’.

As he was saying this, it emerged he has taken a lucrative consultancy with that other well-known bastion of democracy, Saudi Arabia. Hammond will advise the kingdom’s finance minister ahead of the G20 summit in December.

This is the same Hammond who came under fire in 2015 for accepting a £2,000 watch from a Saudi sheikh despite a ban on ministers taking gifts worth more than £140. The then Foreign Secretary argued that he accepted it as an MP, so the rule did not apply.

Will he raise ‘in private’ the 184 executions in Saudi in 2019, or the murder of the journalist Jamal Khashoggi in 2018 in a Saudi consulate? How will we know?

Labour MP and new mum Stella Creasy has been waxing lyrical about the joys of parenthood. ‘My daughter has reached the hair-pulling, head-butting, skin-pinching and hand-slapping stage of development,’ she says of seven-month-old Hettie. ‘It’s like living in WrestleMania without the sparkly Lycra or the ability to tap out . . . ’ Sounds a bit like the House of Commons. 

Money talks for ex-PM Theresa

Theresa May may be no Cicero when it comes to holding the Commons chamber in the grip of her oratory but, a year since she made her tearful departure from Downing Street, she’s banked a tidy £1.3 million on the international lecture circuit.

This total includes an advance payment of £160,370 from JP Morgan Chase, the biggest investment bank in the U.S., for two speaking engagements yet to take place. But she still accepts smaller donations towards running her Maidenhead constituency office.

Tucked away in her entry in the Commons Register of Members’ Financial Interests is a payment of £2,500 from one Mr Philip May, who just happens to be the former PM’s husband.

Is he aware his wife has gone from lame duck to the goose that laid the golden eggs?

English Heritage has reported a sharp rise in visitors to Barnard Castle in County Durham since Boris Johnson’s chief adviser Dominic Cummings drove there to ‘test his eyesight’ during the lockdown.

John Blissett, the mayor of Barnard Castle, says: ‘Crowds have been coming in as the curiosity is there. I don’t know whether the opticians have had any more trade though!’

A gold medal for being wrong

Labour MP Lloyd Russell-Moyle, a Corbynite who quit the party’s frontbench last week, was reduced to tears by the BBC’s rerunning of the London 2012 Olympic Games opening ceremony.

‘I still watch the opening ceremony and cry,’ he says. ‘It was progressive patriotism at its finest, built on the legacy of the socially reforming Labour government. It’s genuinely felt downhill from there.’

Russell-Moyle seems to have forgotten that the Games took place under a Conservative mayor (Boris Johnson, 2008-2016) and David Cameron’s government.

On ITV’s Loose Women last week, Sadiq Khan said he was once a comedian. I’ve got news for the London Mayor . . . a lot of people think he still is.

Last Tuesday, BBC4 broadcast Rise Of The Nazis, narrated by actress Kate Fleetwood. It was immediately followed on BBC2 by The Rise Of The Murdoch Dynasty, also voiced by Fleetwood. Is the Beeb trying to tell us something?