Steerpike, Author at The Spectator

Thursday

January 19, 2023

Fresh Tory fury over Levelling Up funds

From our UK edition

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

January 18, 2023

Steerpike

Corbynista MP backs down after attacking ‘transphobic’ Tory

From our UK edition

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

From our UK edition

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

From our UK edition

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

January 17, 2023

Steerpike

Truss and Kwarteng start their own companies

From our UK edition

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’

From our UK edition

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

From our UK edition

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

From our UK edition

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

From our UK edition

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

From our UK edition

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

January 16, 2023

Steerpike

Coming soon: Boris Johnson’s memoir

From our UK edition

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

From our UK edition

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

From our UK edition

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?

From our UK edition

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.

Sunday

January 15, 2023

Steerpike

Starmer squirms on trans rights

From our UK edition

It may be winter but Sir Keir is already sporting flip flops. The Labour leader's appearance on Laura Kuenssberg's show this morning was the best advert for voting Tory seen in recent months, with Starmer unable to give basic answers to simple questions. Having broken most of the ten pledges on which he was elected – and which are still listed on his website – he refused four times to say whether he still stands by his pledge to abolish tuition fees. 'When I was running for leader I made pledges which reflected my values,' he sighed 'since then, we're now three years on, a lot has changed'. By that logic, Starmer's current policy platform, er, doesn't actually reflect his values? Such vacillation was on show again when Kuenssberg pressed Starmer on the tricky topic of trans rights.

Thursday

January 12, 2023

Steerpike

Taxpayers still counting the cost of Imran Ahmad Khan

From our UK edition

Nowadays, MPs' expenses claims are vetted by IPSA to ensure that the spectre of duck houses and flipped mortgages don't darken Westminster once more. But occasionally the odd claim or two gets approved which seems, er, somewhat incongruous: Zarah Sultana's ring light and Angela Rayner's personalised airpods are just two of the more examples. And, perusing the data today, Mr S stumbled across a similarly shocking claim made by the disgraced former MP Imran Ahmad Khan. Six months ago, Steerpike revealed that Ahmad Khan had billed the taxpayer £3,218 for legal costs after being charged with child sexual assault, for which he was subsequently jailed.

Steerpike

Tory MP urges DWP transparency

From our UK edition

Welfare reform is back in Westminster, with both Labour and the Tories now seeking solutions to deal with the 5.2 million on out-of-work benefits – a figure which The Spectator was first to pick up on. The Times today splashed on possible government proposals with Labour's Jon Ashworth now accusing his opposite number Mel Stride of 'stealing' his proposals. In such circumstances, the Department for Work and Pensions could do worse than consider an intriguing proposal put forward by John Penrose MP, the UK's long-time Anti-Corruption Champion. Now confined to the backbenches, Penrose is channelling his reforming zeal into new avenues instead.

Wednesday

January 11, 2023

Steerpike

Angela Rayner charms the women’s lobby

From our UK edition

Angela Rayner hasn’t always had the best of relationships with Fleet Street’s finest. But there was no sign of discord tonight when she charmed the cream of the parliamentary press gallery at the women’s lobby drinks. The Labour deputy leader remarked how ‘I came in [to parliament] in 2015 when the wheels fell off politics, I had about 18 jobs – I’ve still got about 18 jobs’. She also reflected on the relationship she has with her leader: ‘Keir under-shares, I over-share, always an interesting one to one with me and Keir. We promised each other we wouldn’t disclose what we say in those meetings but we rub along quite nicely’ adding to the inevitable laughs ‘steady on.

Steerpike

Tory MP expects voters to go ape

From our UK edition

Four Chancellors, three Prime Ministers, two monarchs and one mini-Budget: it's fair to say 2022 was a crazy year in politics and for the Tories in particular. And at least one Conservative MP has admitted publicly what many of his colleagues are saying privately about their party's prospects at the next election. Jerome Mayhew, the Tory MP for Broadland, told Radio Norfolk last week that: I think we deserve a bit of a kicking as a result of what we've done as a party this year. We haven't covered ourselves in glory in Westminster, you're right, we're on our third Prime Minister in twelve months. No political party is going to come out of that smelling of roses. But we've got to pick ourselves up, which we've done, and we've got Rishi Sunak now as Prime Minister.

Steerpike

Andrew Bridgen loses the Tory whip over Covid vaccine comments

From our UK edition

It's the first Prime Minister's Questions of the year today and No. 10 is keen to get off to a good start. So it is perhaps no surprise then that party officials have quickly moved to strip Andrew Bridgen of the Tory whip three hours after an offensive tweet. The North West Leicestershire MP has raised eyebrows in recent days with his relentless attacks on Covid vaccines. However he was clearly judged to have gone too far this morning when he shared a critical article about the subject and wrote 'As one consultant cardiologist said to me this is the biggest crime against humanity since the holocaust.' An outcry immediately followed.