Steerpike

Steerpike

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

Tuesday

Steerpike

Ex-MP Jared O’Mara accused of fiddling expenses to fund cocaine habit

All rise! Just over three years after quitting parliament, Jared O’Mara now finds himself in court rather than the Commons. The former Labour MP for Sheffield Hallam stands accused of making fake expense claims during his time in Westminster to fund a ‘significant cocaine habit’. On the first day of his trial at Leeds crown court, the jury heard how O’Mara is accused of trying to swindle £30,000 of taxpayers’ money to fund his ‘heavy addiction’.  According to the prosecution, O’Mara tried to pass off the claims as payments related to a fictional charity called ‘Confident About Autism South Yorkshire’.

Steerpike

Is it time for Nadhim Zahawi to come clean?

It’s a new day and once again the news is dominated by Nadhim Zahawi’s tax affairs. Rishi Sunak has asked his independent ethics advisor (all politicians need outside advice when it comes to ethics, after all) to launch an investigation into Zahawi after the Tory chairman admitted making a ‘careless and not deliberate’ tax error. That ethics probe doesn’t appear to have stopped the awkward questions, however. Crime minister Chris Philp appeared on the Today programme this morning; after being grilled about Zahawi’s conduct, he told presenter Mishal Husain: ‘I don't know precisely what form that carelessness took – neither do you’.

Sunday

Steerpike

Labour’s women problem gets worse

As the Conservatives face another round of allegations of Tory sleaze, Labour is doing what it does best: having an internal row about trans rights. After Labour MP Rosie Duffield found herself heckled by her own side for speaking out on her concerns over the SNP"s Scottish gender recognition bill, she penned an article likening being in the Labour Party to an abusive relationship and criticising Keir Starmer over his 'silence' following the incident. Those claims do not appear to have landed well in the Leader's Office. Rather than entering a period of reflection, the Mail on Sunday reports that a senior aide to Keir Starmer said 'it would be nice' if Duffield 'spent a bit more time' in her constituency of Canterbury rather than 'hanging out with JK Rowling'.

Steerpike

Has Boris Johnson thrown Simon Case under the bus?

Oh no. Those who had argued Rishi Sunak would spell a new era of Tory calm appear to have been mistaken. This weekend there are fresh reports of scandal during Boris Johnson’s time as prime minister. The Sunday Times reports today that when Sharp was in the final stages of going for the BBC chairmanship late in 2020, he heard that Johnson was having money troubles and put him in touch with his old pal Sam Blyth, a multimillionaire Canadian businessman who is also a distant cousin of the PM. Blyth could offer Johnson access to the quick cash he wanted. The deal is reported to have been done in the first week of December. Sharp came to Downing Street and talked through the details with Simon Case, the cabinet secretary.

Steerpike

Watch: James Cleverly struggles on Zahawi tax questions

Oh dear, things are not exactly going well for the Tory party this weekend, with the government now facing potential scandals on two separate fronts. Yesterday, the chairman of the Tory party Nadhim Zahawi was forced to concede that HMRC had found that he had made ‘careless and not deliberate’ errors over his tax affairs when being appointed Chancellor of the Exchequer last year. Meanwhile the Sunday Times reports today that Richard Sharp, the chairman of the BBC, was involved in procuring an £800,000 loan for Boris Johnson, weeks before he was recommended for the role. So you can imagine that James Cleverly was not exactly jubilant about embarking on the Sunday broadcast round this morning, to defend the government’s record.

Friday

Steerpike

Has Starmer’s Davos gambit backfired?

Ah, the World Economic Forum: that annual jamboree for plutocratic banksters, avaricious industrialists and superannuated spongers to come together in an orgiastic eulogy to global capital. Sir Keir Starmer is among those in Davos this week as part of the party's latest enterprise initiative. For where better place for a Labour leader to demonstrate his progressive credentials? The purpose of such schmoozing is two-fold. It is intended to show Labour as a pro-business party, which has put the bad old days of Comrade Corbyn well behind them and make Starmer seem 'Prime Ministerial' by having him endure the tedium of meeting various satraps, flunkeys and apparatchiks which comprise the Davos elite. But has this initiative backfired?

Thursday

Steerpike

Fresh Tory fury over Levelling Up funds

To the battalions! Yet another Tory row is unfolding, this time over the thorny issue of funds for deprived communities. ‘Levelling-up cash favours south east over red wall’ roars the headline of today’s Times. Inside are anonymous Conservatives aplenty, full of righteous anger and indignant quotes. Tuesday saw the announcement of the second round of cash payments from a £2 billion-plus levelling up fund, shared between 111 communities across the UK. In England 52 Tory constituencies benefit, more than twice as many as those represented by Labour MPs – though there are obviously many more Conservative MPs across the country.

Wednesday

Steerpike

Corbynista MP backs down after attacking ‘transphobic’ Tory

Lloyd Russell-Moyle is no stranger to controversy. The Labour MP previously said sorry to JK Rowling after accusing her of using her own sexual assault as 'justification' for her views on trans people. Back when Jeremy Corbyn was Labour leader, the Brighton MP said those who quit the party were 'scabs'. This week, Russell-Moyle has been busy in the Commons blasting a Tory MP. The Corbynista MP lashed out against Miriam Cates after she expressed concern that the Scottish gender bill would make it 'vastly easier for a predator to get access to children'. https://www.youtube.com/watch?

Steerpike

Cake tsar’s pay takes the biscuit

You probably hadn't heard of Susan Jebb until today. For 18 months she has served in happy obscurity as the head of the Food Standards Agency. Until, that is, she decided to give an interview in which she suggested bringing cake into the office should be seen as harmful to your colleagues in the same way as passive smoking. She told the Times: We all like to think we’re rational, intelligent, educated people who make informed choices the whole time and we undervalue the impact of the environment. If nobody brought in cakes into the office, I would not eat cakes in the day, but because people do bring cakes in, I eat them. Now, OK, I have made a choice, but people were making a choice to go into a smoky pub. Clearly Jebb prefers a diet of food in mouth.

Steerpike

Welsh Labour MS in Holocaust Memorial Day controversy

Oh dear. It seems that Welsh Labour are at it again. Running Cardiff Bay ought to be the easiest job in politics: bash the Tories, soft soap the nationalists and wrap yourself in the Y Ddraig Goch. But some of its representatives in the Senedd can’t even get that right. For Steerpike hears that Julie Morgan, Labour’s deputy minister for social services, has caused a bit of a storm in the Welsh parliament about a deeply sensitive matter. Morgan, who has represented Cardiff North since 2011, is sponsoring and hosting a Holocaust Memorial Day event next week - an event that doesn’t actually mention the Holocaust’s Jewish victims on its invitation.

Tuesday

Steerpike

Truss and Kwarteng start their own companies

It's a busy time for ex-Prime Ministers. Theresa May has been totting up her thousands in speaking fees while Boris Johnson has been unveiling his portrait, trailing his memoir and generally making mischief for Rishi Sunak. And amid much speculation about the future projects of Liz Truss, Mr S can reveal that Britain's shortest-serving PM today formally incorporated her eponymous company for post-premiership life. It is titled simply 'the office of Liz Truss Limited' with the onetime Tory leader and her husband Hugh O'Leary listed as the two directors of the firm. And Truss isn't the only one who has clearly being having a productive time since leaving the office.

Steerpike

SNP leader calls Tories ‘rabid gammon’

Just what is it about 'kinder, gentler politics' that brings out the worst in our politicians? This afternoon's ministerial state on the Westminster government's decision to block the Gender Recognition Reform Bill has appeared, at times, to be little more than a race to the bottom. First, there was the jeering and sneering which greeted Rosie Duffield from the SNP and Labour benches when she rose to voice her approval of the decision. And now, at the end of that statement and the beginning of a debate on the Bill, the leader of the SNP's Westminster group has given us another demonstration of 'civic nationalism' in all its tolerant glory.

Steerpike

Watch: Labour’s Rosie Duffield jeered from her own benches in transgender row

Oh dear. It seems that not all in the Labour party share their leader's professed scepticism of Scotland's new Gender Recognition Reform Bill. This afternoon, Rosie Duffield rose in the Commons to support Scottish secretary Alister Jack's decision to block the new legislation. But she had barely started speaking before the jeers rang out across the House. Barracking is hardly unusual in parliament, yet what was remarkable was how they came exclusively from the opposition benches. Members of Duffield's own party joined in unison with the SNP to express their displeasure at her words of encouragement for Jack. Jack responded by praising Duffield's 'courage in standing up for this issue' to warm cheers of approval from Conservative MPs.

Steerpike

Even Iran’s mullahs have turned on Prince Harry

Is there anyone left who likes Prince Harry? His popularity is plunging, his allies have turned on him – and now even the mad mullahs of Iran have come out against him. Tehran's butchers have managed to find time between atrocities to issue a public condemnation of the dilettante Duke of Sussex's recent book Spare. Apparently it's in poor taste. Twitter may be banned under Iran's internet censorship laws but that didn't stop the country's foreign ministry from firing off a series of tweets this morning, indignantly responding to Britain's condemnation of the hanging of Alireza Akbari.

Steerpike

Education Secretary flounders on changing gender at 16

Back to school for Gillian Keegan. It seems that the Education Secretary hasn't learnt her lines properly, judging by her performance on this morning's media round. The Chichester MP appeared on Sky's breakfast show today, follows last night's news that the Westminster government will block Holyrood's Gender Recognition Reform Bill. Keegan was invited by Kay Burley to give her thoughts on whether 16 is too young to decide your gender identity; the Education Secretary obligingly took the bait. 'No, I don't actually, I think 16, I was working at 16, I was paying tax at 16, I was making decisions for myself at 16.

Steerpike

Watch: Green MSP suggests eight-year-olds could legally change sex

Crisis! Outrage! Fury! It's all kicking off in Scotland today, with much nationalist self-righteous anger at the impertinence, nay the audacity, of a Tory government daring to object to a law passed by Holyrood. Why, it's nothing less than a fundamental breach of the founding principles of the Scotland Act on which the parliament was built – including of course, er, Section 35, the mechanism by which Westminster has blocked Sturgeon's Gender Recognition Reform bill. It is of course worth considering what exactly the GRR would mean – especially as it allows 16 year-olds to change their gender without parental consent.

Monday

Steerpike

Coming soon: Boris Johnson’s memoir

Ping! An email pops up in Steerpike's inbox. 'Boris Johnson's memoir acquired by HarperCollins' roars the subject line, heralding the arrival of an effusive press release to mark the exciting news. Not content with earning £250,000 per speech and unveiling portraits of himself, it seems our former PM has decided that the time is now right for his considered reflections on his time in office (read: settle some old scores and make off with the moolah.) In suitably gushing tones, Arabella Pike, the publicity director of the HarperCollins publishing house, promises that: ‘This will be a prime ministerial memoir like no other.

Steerpike

Poll: voters back Sunak blocking Sturgeon’s gender plans

Welcome to the Terf wars. There's just two days ago until the deadline when Rishi Sunak has to decide whether or not to block Nicola Sturgeon's Gender Recognition Reform Bill. The legislation was passed last month by a majority at Holyrood of 86 to 39 votes and made it easier for people as young as 16 to change gender without seeing a doctor. However under Section 35 of the Scotland Act, UK ministers can stop a bill getting royal assent if they think it would alter laws reserved to Westminster – in this case equalities law and, specifically, the Equality Act. Sunak must decide by Wednesday whether to use this mechanism to stop the legislation or accept it, amid fears that it could lead to 'gender tourism' across the border.

Steerpike

Shock as the New York Times praises Britain

Ah, the New York Times. For years now, the world's worst newspaper has painted a grim picture of Britain as a quasi-dictatorial kingdom. It's a country drowning in 'imperial nostalgia', where locals huddle round bin fires on the streets of the great metropolis, gnawing on legs of mutton and cavorting in swamps. Our late Queen 'helped obscure a bloody history of decolonisation'; our judicial system is racist for daring to lock up slave masters. So deranged is the newspaper that it even hired a former Russia Today contributor to sneer that Britain is 'a nation falling apart at the seams.' Who on earth would ever want to live here? Well, it turns out, er, the New York Times actually does.

Steerpike

Will porngate Parish return to parliament?

There's a spectre haunting Westminster: the spectre of Neil Parish. The former Tiverton MP spent twelve years in parliament in happy backbench obscurity. Until, that is, he became the new poster boy of Tory sleaze last April when he admitted watching pornography twice in the Palace of Westminster. Parish first tried to brazen it out, telling GB News that the MP 'should be dealt with and dealt with seriously' before his identity was known. He then suggested he was merely trying to look at pictures of tractors online. After that failed, Parish resigned as an MP, turning Tiverton's 24,000 Conservative majority into a Lib Dem majority of 6,000 on a 38-point swing. It was one of two by-election defeats for Boris Johnson that ultimately led to the Prime Minister's downfall.