Steerpike is The Spectator's gossip columnist, serving up the latest tittle tattle from Westminster and beyond. Email tips to steerpike@spectator.co.uk or message @MrSteerpike
To the Parlimentary Press Gallery dinner, held in the splendour of the National Liberal Club. This event hasn’t been held for four years, with Press Gallery chair Sam Lister joking that ‘Boris Johnson locked the country down’ to avoid attending while Liz Truss resigned the day her invitation to this shindig arrived. Lister gave the
The SNP civil war has returned to the offices of Holyrood and nationalist infighting is only getting more toxic. Veteran politician Fergus Ewing was last night disciplined after months of vocally criticising his party’s policies — and voting against the government during junior minister Lorna Slater’s confidence motion. Although his punishment has been dished up,
Ah the regional BBC round: the chance for any aspiring local reporter to make a name for themselves. Every year, in the run-up to Tory conference, the party leader must subject themselves to this ritual piñata, in which they face a barrage of quick-fire questions from journalists across the country. Last year it was Liz
The GB News row rumbles on, with its enemies seeing the perfect chance to call for its closure. A genuinely indefensible blunder from two of the channel’s regulars, Laurence Fox and Dan Wootton, has seen both suspended. But questions are now being asked about the overall culture – and even whether it should be banned
Is open debate now too painful for the SNP? Fergus Ewing, one of the party’s longest serving (and most outspoken) politicians has tonight been suspended for a week after criticising his own government’s ministers and policies. The disciplinary action comes after a series of statements Ewing made in recent months attacking the direction of the
The morning broadcast round is often dreaded by politicians sent out to bat for the government. Today it was the unlucky turn of Culture Secretary Lucy Frazer, who ended up being savaged by Kay Burley on Sky News while defending Home Secretary Suella Braverman’s call to reform the UN refugee convention. Early on, Frazer had
Oh dear. It seems that the self-proclaimed ‘People’s Channel’ has been at it again. GB News has been forced to formally suspend both Laurence Fox and Dan Wootton after comments on his show last night about the political commentator Ava Evans. In a segment ostensibly responding to Evans’ comments about male mental health, Fox called
Three years on from the toppling of the Edward Colston statue in Bristol, an organiser of a Black Lives Matter protest in the city has admitted to fraudulently taking money from a fundraising page dedicated to the demonstration. The fundraiser had reportedly raised tens of thousands of pounds. Xahra Saleem, 23, pleaded guilty to one
The Lib Dem conference is still in full swing in Bournemouth and the party’s long-suffering activists seem to have something of a spring in their step. After a triumphant local elections and a quartet of by-election victories, the party looks set to double their parliamentary contingent, come next year’s contest. Lib Dem aspirations in the
Childcare can be a contentious issue at the best of times. So Mr S was intrigued to read of reports that Boris and Carrie Johnson have fallen out with their ex-nanny, Theresa Dawes. She claims that she was unfairly dismissed three days into the job after having a drink with the former PM while his
What is Liz Truss’s legacy? It’s a question that will no doubt entertain future historians. But one thing they will never be able to take away from her is a place in the annals of Lib Dem history. As a former card-carrying member, Truss earned an entry in the party’s infamous ‘Glee Club’ songbook –
Is there any greater anthropological experiment than the Lib Dems’ annual conference? Britain’s third party has not had such a jamboree since 2019 and the delegates are determined to make the most of it. Mr S certainly saw some sights at last night’s disco, where Munira Wilson and Wendy Chamberlain were among the MPs to
The Lib Dem conference is well underway and the party has a spring in its step. After four by-election gains in this parliament, there’s much excited talk in the conference bars about the party doubling their MPs next year. So what’s behind the orange surge? Clearly, er, not their less-than-charismatic leader. Sir Ed Davey was
It’s the first day of conference season and the Liberal Democrats are keen to make the most of it. This year their slogan is ‘For a fair deal’. But is renegotiating the Brexit deal really what they’re all about? Ahead of this weekend’s conference Sir Ed Davey was keen to put such talk to bed,
Just when we thought we had seen the last of John Bercow on our screens, the news has broken that the former speaker of the House of Commons is joining the line up of the US version of the hit game show The Traitors. Currently being filmed in Scotland, the show will see Bercow join the
Big news from the media world. Rupert Murdoch is stepping down as Chairman of Fox and News Corp as of November, with his son Lachlan succeeding him as sole chair of both. Murdoch will assume the title of Chairman Emeritus of each company, after seven decades in the print and broadcast industries. The Sun king, aged 92, wrote in
If you want a bruiser, send for Badenoch. Following Rishi Sunak’s net zero announcement yesterday, the Business and Trade Secretary was deployed to do the morning media round. Asked about Zac Goldsmith’s criticisms of the move, she told Nick Ferrari on LBC that the peer ‘is somebody who cares very much about the environment, he
Rishi Sunak defended his net zero u-turn during an acrimonious interview with the BBC’s Nick Robinson on the Today programme. The Prime Minister, who yesterday pushed back the ban on new petrol and diesel cars to 2035, insisted that: ‘I believe in net zero and I want to deliver it’. But Sunak came in for
So there we have it. Rishi Sunak’s big announcement this afternoon was, er, a not entirely unreasonable five-year delay in the ban on petrol cars and gas boilers. Snap polling suggests it has gone down well with the public, who back the measure by 50 to 34 per cent. But judging from some of the
Talk about politics making strange bedfellows. It seems some unlikely alliances are being formed on this wet Wednesday afternoon, following the news that Rishi Sunak plans to water down his Net Zero commitments this evening. On the Tory side, two of Liz Truss’s former supporters – Chris Skidmore and Simon Clarke –were straight out of