Steerpike, Author at The Spectator

Saturday

9 December 2023

Labour MSP lodges Taylor Swift motion

They say that politics is showbiz for ugly people. And up in Holyrood they’re doing little to dispel that impression with the latest initiative put forward by Labour MSP Monica Lennon. She’s using a parliamentary motion to raise awareness of an important issue. What is it? Scotland’s tanking education ratings? The ever-spiralling problem of drug deaths? No, it’s a hagiographic paean to, er, Taylor Swift. What a good use of time… Hailing the pop sensation on Twitter, the self-professed Swiftie posted her motion, requesting that: ‘Parliament congratulates Taylor Swift on being named Time magazine’s Person of the Year for 2023’ and ‘acknowledges that the singer-songwriter has spoken with pride about her Scottish roots’. Hard-hitting stuff.

Steerpike

Jenrick takes aim at Rishi’s Rwanda fix

After three days of speculation, Robert Jenrick has finally broken cover. In this morning's Daily Telegraph he sets out in an 1,800-word article, the reasons why he resigned from government on Wednesday, why he thinks the Rwanda Bill will fail and what his broader concerns are about high levels of migration. On Sunak's flagship legislation, Jenrick expresses doubt that ministers will really use powers to ignore Strasbourg interim measures grounding flights. He writes that 'the new Bill replicates the provisions under the section 55 of the Illegal Migration Act, which enables ministers to use their “discretion”, but in practice I know the instances this will be used is vanishingly rare, if ever.

Friday

8 December 2023

Steerpike

Starmer caught in Thatcher U-turn

Stop the presses: Starmer Chameleon has U-turned once again. In predictable fashion, he last night sought to row back on his praise for Margaret Thatcher less than a week after he hailed her ‘natural entrepreneurialism’ in the Sunday Telegraph. In a speech which justified his critics’ claims that he changes his rhetoric to match his auspices, Starmer told a Scottish Labour gala dinner in Glasgow: She did terrible things, particularly here in Scotland which everybody in this room, myself included, profoundly disagrees with. Trying to square this week’s views with last weekend’s column, Starmer pleaded that ‘the point I was trying to make…is that there are some political leaders who have a mission, a plan, that they implement’.

Steerpike

Watch: SNP MSP’s bizarre poem riff

Back up to Holyrood, where the nationalists never fail to entertain. To cover up for the absence of any real policy delivery by her party, SNP MSP Kaukab Stewart has decided to, er, rap. The Glasgow MSP was speaking in the Chamber yesterday evening about an amendment made to the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child Bill. She told an unenthusiastic audience that ‘once a teacher, always a teacher’ before launching into a poem she had ‘penned and dedicated’ to the children listening. Mr S hates to burst the SNP’s bubble of self-delusion but he imagines children across Scotland have a number of things they’d rather do than, er, watch parliament TV.

Steerpike

Prince Harry loses (again)

Good old Prince Harry has done it once again. In spite of all his strenuous efforts to avoid press intrusion, the renegade royal can’t stop making the headlines. The prince this morning lost his bid to have the Mail on Sunday (MoS) publisher’s defence to his libel claim thrown out of the courts. Lawyers for Associated Newspapers (ANL) slammed Harry’s case, saying it was ‘wholly without merit’ and ‘built on sand’. Ouch. The Duke of Sussex is suing ANL over an article published in 2022 on his legal challenge against the Home Office after his security arrangements were changed.

Thursday

7 December 2023

Steerpike

Revealed: Sturgeon’s ministers used personal devices for government business

And back to the SNP’s Scotland, which is not quite the land of milk and honey that the Nats would like to make out. It turns out that former first minister Nicola Sturgeon and the majority of her ministers refused to use government-issued mobile phones during her time in office. Cover-ups? Surely not! Government officials confirmed to the Times that the former first minister and her most senior colleagues used only personal devices to call or text workmates. It reports that, in fact, only a quarter of those ministers in post between February 2020 and January 2022 were recorded as having official phones. Interestingly, 26 of the 30 ministers currently working under Humza Yousaf, the first minister, have government-issued devices.

Steerpike

Watch: BBC presenter puts middle finger up at viewers

Is the licence fee worth it? Mr Steerpike thinks it might be if Maryam Moshiri presents the news more often. The BBC news anchor was caught out this morning holding her middle finger up at the camera at the start of the hourly bulletin. Moshiri has since claimed that it was a ‘private joke with the team’: I was pretending to count down as the director was counting me down from 10-0.. including the fingers to show the number. So from 10 fingers held up to one. Oh dear. She may have more than a few disgruntled viewers after today’s programme, but there were some supportive comments at least. Specsavers told her: ‘We're with you, Maryam. If you are struggling to see the countdown, let us know.’ Mr S can only picture how she might have reacted to that...

Wednesday

6 December 2023

Steerpike

Watch: Home Office minister reacts to Jenrick’s exit

It was Herbert Morrison who remarked that the corridors of the Home Office are paved with dynamite. Well tonight, they're blowing up. Just three weeks after Suella Braverman was unceremoniously fired from 2 Marsham Street, her onetime junior minister has now followed her out of the door. After two hours of speculation, it has now been confirmed that Robert Jenrick has quit the immigration brief, having made clear his objections to Rishi Sunak's newly unveiled Rwanda legislation.One person who found out the news the hard way was, er, Jenrick's colleague, Laura Farris. She was about to go on air with Andrew Marr on LBC before she was told the news.

Steerpike

Watch: Diane Abbott gets shut down on anti-Semitism

Diane Abbott has been shown up once again. This time it is by the Campaign Against Anti-Semitism, during a meeting with the Home Affairs Committee this afternoon. On the pro-Palestine marches, Abbott told the CAA rather patronisingly: I have actually been on these demonstrations, you haven't. And I have to tell you, on both the big London demonstrations I have been on, I have not seen a single solitary soul glorifying Hamas... Are you saying that you want marches of this kind completely banned? CAA chief executive Gideon Falter wasted no time in shutting down the independent MP, responding dryly: We also know very well that you didn't see any anti-Semitism at all in the Labour party under Jeremy Corbyn...

Steerpike

Key moments: Boris faces the music at the Covid inquiry

Today’s the day. The start of one of the most highly anticipated evidence sessions at the Covid Inquiry sees former Prime Minister Boris Johnson take the hot seat. Here are the key points from his evidence so far: Baroness Hallett reprimands those leaking Covid evidence Baroness Hallett told Johnson that his statement is supposed to remain ‘confidential’, wrapping metaphorical knuckles as she continued: ‘Failing to respect confidentiality undermines the inquiry’s ability to do its job fairly, effectively and independently’. https://youtu.be/tfU7Wj5s-q0 But before today’s hearing could go much further, there was another halt to the proceedings. Just as Johnson launched into his apology, protestors off camera had made their presence known.

Steerpike

Omid Scobie’s royal tell-all flops

For a couple supposedly desperate for privacy, Meghan and Harry have an interesting definition of what it means to escape the spotlight. This time, however, they don’t have themselves entirely to thank. Journalist and royal-obsessive Omid Scobie has reopened the wounds of the regal family scandal after releasing his new biography Endgame, risking the wrath of the royals. While Scobie insists the couple were not involved in the book, it’s not gone unnoticed that neither Meghan nor Harry have condemned any of the stories in it criticising their family members. The book has attracted plenty of publicity but it’s not gone quite as well for Scobie as he might have hoped.

Tuesday

5 December 2023

Steerpike

Penny Mordaunt takes a dig at the Old Etonians

It’s Christmas party season in Westminster and tonight it was the turn of the Adam Smith Institute to do the honours. The free market think tank turned to Penny Mordaunt for her now-traditional turn on the seasonal circuit. Steerpike’s sources tell him that the Leader of the House writes most of the gags that she deploys at Business Questions. And tonight was no exception as she expounded the merits of the festive goods available in parliament: We are well into the first advent week but it is not too late, folks, to get an advent calendar if you’ve not got one already. And I’m just going to give you a quick plug if you don’t mind of the House of Commons gift shop and what we have on special offer in there, because we do have some lovely discounted advent calendars.

Steerpike

Remainers proven wrong about Brexit security risks

Another day, another Remoaner myth destroyed. Today’s report on International Partnerships by parliament's Intelligence and Security Committee finds that ‘Brexit has not had a negative impact on intelligence co-operation between the UK and EU member states’. How very curious – not least because of the incessant warnings spouted by Brexit pessimists of the very opposite happening. So much for all that fear-mongering, eh? The conclusion follows examples of rather commendatory reports from MI5. The organisation assured the committee that ‘European partners have been very keen to continue working with MI5’ and its director general added: ‘I don’t think [Brexit] has led to a material diminution in the UK’s standing [in terms of intelligence co-operation].

Steerpike

Scottish Labour splits with Starmer on Thatcher

Labour might be making headway in the polls, but the party’s rifts haven’t gone away. Today, Anas Sarwar, the leader of Scottish Labour, has hit out at the late Margaret Thatcher – only days after Sir Keir Starmer praised her ‘natural entrepreneurialism’ in his Sunday Telegraph op-Ed. Speaking to reporters, Sarwar said: Margaret Thatcher destroyed communities across the country. She decimated Scotland. That's why it was right to oppose her then, and it's right for us to oppose the modern day Thatcherism of this Conservative party. His comments continue a trend of Scottish Labour pushing back on policy positions adopted by their London-based colleagues – including the bedroom tax, the two-child benefit cap and Scotland’s gender reforms.

Steerpike

Tory right want migration crackdown to go further

Uh oh. Less than a day has passed since James Cleverly announced his new five-point immigration plan and already there are noises from the Tory right suggesting they want more. Recently-ousted home secretary Suella Braverman said last night the government ‘can go further’ and that the ‘package is too late’. It followed comments made last week by Kemi Badenoch, who said that she wanted to push for ‘much, much tougher’ immigration plans. The immigration minister Robert Jenrick agreed. Speaking to Times Radio, Jenrick couldn’t quite say whether getting net migration to below the 2019 level would be possible before the next election. Echoing the sentiment of his former boss, Jenrick admitted that the government may need to do more in their plans to tackle migration levels.

Monday

4 December 2023

Steerpike

Gove promises ‘Dawn will be coming’

He has served under four of the last five Tory premiers. So who better to address revellers at the ConservativeHome Christmas shindig than Michael Gove? This evening the Levelling Up Secretary took to the stage to deliver the canapé equivalent of a state of the nation address. And, in true Gove style, he began by heaping praise on his hosts. ConservativeHome, he noted, was founded in 2005 and as such has now ‘been going for more than 18 years – it’s older than many members of the House of Lords!

Steerpike

Tory MPs rebel over infected blood vote

It’s another bad day for Rishi Sunak. Hours after the Prime Minister discovered that he is polling worse than his short-lived predecessor Liz Truss and losing supporters to Nigel Farage's Reform party, he has tonight had to confront a Tory rebellion. The sliver of good news for Sunak is that it has turned out to be a smaller mutiny than first thought. 23 Tory rebels, including former Welsh secretary Sir Robert Buckland, joined forces with the opposition this evening to support a Labour amendment to the Victim and Prisoners Bill – a little less than the 31 MPs who had signed the amendment before the vote. The matter concerns the contaminated blood scandal of the 70s and 80s, where tens of thousands of patients were given infected blood products.

Steerpike

Watch: Scottish Lib Dem leader accused of voting from the pub

It takes a lot for the Scottish Liberal Democrats to make headlines, but party leader Alex Cole-Hamilton has today gone and done it. The Lib Dem leader made a rather embarrassing gaffe when trying to vote remotely on a recent Holyrood motion, prompting calls for the politician to apologise for his ‘inappropriate’ conduct. Absent from the Chamber, Cole-Hamilton used his phone to raise a point of order, projecting his face onto the parliament screen without quite managing to keep his background discreet. MSPs were quick to spot Cole-Hamilton in the parliament’s pub Margo’s, a mere minute’s walk away from the Chamber. Calls of ‘shame!’ and ‘disgrace!

Steerpike

Six of the worst SNP sex scandals

It seems a fresh scandal is embroiling the SNP. In recent days, reports have emerged that two of the party’s politicians were so wrapped up in an extramarital affair during Covid that they disregarded their own government’s pandemic restrictions to continue it. Matt Hancock, step aside… The SNP has denied the rumours as ‘categorically untrue’, but reports of the illicit affair continue to dominate the news. Mr S takes a look at some of the most recent SNP sex scandals to have hit the headlines. Here are six of the worst that we can report on: 1. Love triangle A storyline fit for the movies, this scandal began with three love-rats and ended in two broken marriages.

Steerpike

Eddie Izzard’s charm offensive backfires

If there’s one thing Eddie Izzard can’t be faulted on, it’s enthusiasm. The comedian and actor, who also self-identifies as Suzy, is standing to become the Labour candidate for Brighton Pavilion. After Green MP Caroline Lucas announced she would not be standing for election in 2024, Izzard jumped at the chance to succeed her — less than a year after attempting to stand for Sheffield Central some 230 miles away. Since then, Izzard’s self-promotion has been nothing short of relentless, ahead of the upcoming local Labour selection meeting. Indeed Eddie is so committed to the area that Brighton will become Izzard’s ‘main home’ — but only if the constituents deign to elect the comedian as their new MP.