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
Ding ding ding! US President Donald Trump hit out at London mayor Sadiq Khan at the UN general assembly yesterday and now the Labour man is hitting back. The mayor has accused Trump of showing he is ‘racist, sexist, misogynist and Islamophobic’ after the President claimed Khan was trying to put London under sharia law.
To Reform UK, which is continuing to lead Sir Keir Starmer’s Labour party in the polls. Nigel Farage has led a successful summer campaign on crime rates, small boats and legal migration. But as conference season begins, the Reform leader has come under scrutiny for one of his more bizarre campaign messages – namely that
Well, well, well. The spotlight is back on Sir Keir Starmer’s chief of staff Morgan McSweeney – and not in a good way. It transpires that the Labour Together founder’s lawyer advised him that he should mark £700,000 of undisclosed donations as an ‘admin error’, according to a leaked document from 2021 published by the
Donald Trump’s trip to the UK has finished and it appears his love-in with London has ended too. In a speech at the UN headquarters in New York, the US President took a pop at London mayor Sadiq Khan – calling him a ‘terrible, terrible mayor’ – before claiming that the Labour politician wants to
After weeks of suspense, the big day has finally arrived. The Scottish government has arranged a meeting in Inverness with quango and industry bosses to discuss what is apparently one of the most pressing issues facing Scotland. Not the future of the oil and gas industry, not the failures in the country’s rural health service
Sarah Ferguson, the Duchess of York and former wife of Prince Andrew, has come under scrutiny this week after an email that saw her praising paedophile Jeffrey Epstein was unearthed. The Duchess’s spokesperson said that Ferguson had received a ‘chilling’ phone call from the criminal after she gave an interview in 2011 confessing to have
To the US, where President Donald Trump has suggested his administration has ‘found an answer to autism’. On Monday, Trump drew links between paracetamol and rising rates of autism across America. US health officials warned that acetaminophen (paracetamol) should be avoided in early pregnancy to avert the development of autism in later life, with Trump
Labour might have recognised Palestinian statehood and green-lighted a new Gatwick runway, but Nigel Farage has once again managed to steal the show. This morning the Reform UK leader held a London press conference in which he announced his plans to abolish indefinite leave to remain, make foreign nationals ineligible to claim benefits and introduce
Liberal Democrat party conference – four words which turn the blood of any lobby journalist cold. Yes, it is that time of year again: the annual five-day bonanza in which the perennial third party of British politics desperately tries to find some relevance. In his never-ending quest for headlines, Sir Ed Davey – the clown
The otherwise run-of-the-mill First Minister’s Questions in the Scottish Parliament came to a dramatic conclusion this afternoon. Before the Presiding Officer moved onto the next item of business, former Conservative leader Douglas Ross made a point of order alleging that he had been assaulted by an SNP government minister. Crikey! He told SNP First Minister John Swinney:
Well, well, well. At long last, two months after it was agreed, the first illegal migrant has been deported from Britain to France under Keir Starmer’s ‘one in, one out’ deal with Emmanuel Macron. The news comes after this week saw a number of delays thanks to lawyers submitting eleventh-hour legal challenges – putting a
Oh dear. Former government minister Tulip Siddiq has come under scrutiny over former claims she made about holding a Bangladesh national identity card. The Labour MP is on trial in abstentia in Bangladesh after being accused of influencing her aunt, the deposed authoritarian ruler Sheikh Hasina, to buy plots of land for her family. She
Sadiq Khan has taken to the august pages of the Guardian today to vent about the US President, just hours after Donald Trump touched down in Britain. London’s Mayor fumed about Trump’s tariffs and the US president’s criticism of the capital, before launching into a rant on how ‘President Donald Trump and his coterie have
Well, well, well. This morning news has come that 28-year-old Oliver Steadman, a former Labour councillor, has been charged with offences including blackmail over the honeytrap scandal in Westminster. The former local politician has received charges of communication offences relating to five victims – including MPs – according to the Crown Prosecution Service and Scotland
You spend ages waiting for a defection then two come along at once. On the same day that former Tory health minister Maria Caulfield defected to Reform, Mr S can reveal that Henry Smith, the former Conservative MP for Crawley, has also jumped ship. Smith was first elected to parliament in 2010 and was a member
It’s not been Sir Keir Starmer’s week. After a 100,000-strong march at the weekend saw Brits protest issues like Britain’s borders, the news that the Home Office has failed to deport migrants to France for the second day in a row is unlikely to defuse tensions. Thanks to human rights claims, the one-in one-out migrants
Oh dear. It seems that the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) has blundered again. The latest furore is about the agency’s decision to drop a China espionage case that alleged the involvement of more than two dozen reports to Beijing intelligence. The case collapsed yesterday and ‘not guilty’ verdicts were entered after Tom Little KC, the
When it rains for Starmer, it pours. As if the Prime Minister didn’t have enough on his plate – what with his deputy Angela Rayner resigning over her tax affairs before Starmer sacked Peter Mandelson from his ambassador role over his links to Jeffrey Epstein – now one of his top aides has quit over
Oh dear. If Sir Keir Starmer thought his first 12 months in office had been rocky, his second year in power is shaping up to be an even bumpier ride. This weekend saw myriad briefings against the Prime Minister after a tumultuous two weeks in which he lost his deputy Angela Rayner to a tax
Another day, another defector joins Reform. This time it’s Tory MP Danny Kruger, who has joined Nigel Farage’s outfit to lead the party’s ‘preparations for government’ – despite the politician never having held a ministerial job himself. The first sitting Conservative politician to defect to Reform since last year’s election gave a punchy statement at