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
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Poor Andy Burnham. This time last year the Mayor of Manchester was riding high in the Labour leadership stakes, having cruised to re-election with a whopping 67 per cent of the vote, as Sir Keir Starmer struggled to cut through in Westminster. Now the fortunes are reversed: Starmer is 20 points ahead in the polls,
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Jeremy Corbyn has been an MP for 40 years, but Keir Starmer has confirmed Corbyn’s time in the Labour party has come to an end. Starmer was asked three times on the Today programme whether Corbyn – who was kicked out in 2020 over his response to the equalities watchdog’s report into antisemitism in the
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Oh dear. It seems that the curse of Izzard has struck again. The stand-up comedian and staunch Labour member has something of an unenviable track record when it comes to personal endorsements, having backed the euro, Ken Livingstone in 2008, Gordon Brown in 2010, ‘Yes2AV’ in 2011, Ed Miliband and then Andy Burnham in 2015,
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Life is good in the Labour party right now – which is perhaps why it’s no surprise that a few old faces could be making a comeback. In the late nineties and early noughties, a crop of talented young New Labour advisors were dubbed ‘the golden generation’. Much like their footballing equivalents in the England
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Tory politicians are dropping like flies at the moment – with former cabinet minister Sajid Javid the latest in a growing line of MPs to announce that he won’t be standing for office at the next general election. So perhaps it’s not surprising that Tory ministers are currently looking for silver linings wherever they can
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Who’d want to work in parliament eh? The roof is leaking and the toilets don’t work, the floor is damaged and the masonry is collapse. Now, Mr S brings news of yet more bad tidings afflicting the House of Commons. It seems the place is stuffed full of vermin – talk about a perfect state-of-the
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It takes all types to make a parliament. The House of Commons is a veritable menagerie full of rich and exotic creatures – and few embody that better than Dr Jamie Wallis. Within mere weeks of his election in 2019, Wallis was forced to deny reports that he had been a co-owner of a ‘sugar
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What a year it’s been for Steve Baker. In the space of 12 months he’s gone from Covid rebel ringleader to anti-Boris assassin; the ERG backbencher turned ministerial consensus-seeker. Along the way he’s raised a few eyebrows with some of his statements: defending ‘taking the knee’ at Tory party conference and apologising to Ireland and
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It’s really not Nicola Sturgeon’s week. Fresh from being slapped down by the Supreme Court over her Indyref2 bid, the First Minister suffered the indignity of being heckled last night. Speaking at a Zero Tolerance charity event on tackling male violence against women, Sturgeon could only stand in awkward silence as an unidentified woman took
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Since her (first) appointment to the Home Office, Suella Braverman has been at pains to point out that she is no fan of the left. The Fareham MP spent her final day in office under Liz Truss railing against the ‘Guardian-reading, tofu-eating wokerati’ in parliament, shortly before departing and returning less than a week later
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Let me tell you a story, dear reader. It is about a land – a quasi-dictatorial kingdom no less – where locals huddle round bin fires on the streets of the great metropolis, gnawing on legs of mutton and cavorting in swamps. Once there was good government, but a plebiscite some years ago brought with it autocracy, plague and a
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It was Enoch Powell who once called the whips’ office ‘the sewers of parliament’. But it seems that – much like the aforementioned disciplinarians – the sewers themselves aren’t up to much these days. For word reaches Mr S of a problem with the parliamentary plumbing system that are driving MPs around the (U) bend.
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All eyes tonight will be on Rishi Sunak when he addresses the annual Lord Mayor’s Banquet. The Prime Minister is expected to give his first major speech on foreign policy in which he will pledge to treat Britain’s adversaries in Beijing and Moscow with ‘robust pragmatism.’ Such talk is likely to be read in the
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Things are looking up for the Labour party. They’re twenty points ahead in the polls, the Tories are squabbling over planning reform and just last week Keir Starmer won Politician of the Year at the annual Spectator Parliamentarian Awards. Still – as anyone within the Leader’s Office will tell you – they’re keen to avoid
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Is the BBC trying to mend its ways? Word reaches Mr S that John McAndrew – the former head honcho of GB News – is returning to Broadcasting House as the Corporation’s new Director of News Programmes. The TV veteran boasts more than a quarter of a century of experience in news and current affairs
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The Lying-in-State of Her Majesty the Queen was widely hailed in September as a triumph. The organisation was slick, the tributes were moving, the crowds respectful and the queue deftly managed. But it seems that the otherwise flawless ceremony had one misstep: the impact of all those thousands of visitors on the floor of Westminster
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All of Westminster was glued to their screens on Sunday tonight to watch the final of I’m A Celebrity. For three weeks, SW1’s finest have watched Matt Hancock – the Casanova of the Commons – battle heroically against endless jungle-based challenges. The onetime Health Secretary has been covered in creepy-crawlies and subject to public opprobrium
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Will the last Conservative MP please turn out the lights? In recent days both Will Wragg, 34, and Chloe Smith, 40, have announced they will be quitting the Commons at the next election. And now Dehenna Davison – the Red Wall poster girl of the 2019 election – has become the eighth (and youngest) Tory
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Perhaps the most cathartic moment of The Spectator’s Parliamentarian of the Year awards was when the relatively quiet former PM Theresa May had a pop at the not-so-quiet Piers Morgan. Picking up her award for Speech of the Year, May did acknowledge her weak reputation as a rhetorician. But she got Piers where it hurts:
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If there’s an upside to spending tens of thousands of pounds – as Boris Johnson did – in doing up his Downing Street flat, it’s surely that such a costly renovation will stand the test of time. Unfortunately the £88,000 makeover at No.11, masterminded by A-list interior designer Lulu Lytle, appears to have already seen