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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It’s a bad time to be a Tory whip. Facing briefings of incompetence and allegations of blackmail, backbencher Nus Ghani has overnight added fuel to the fire by claiming she was sacked from her ministerial post because her Muslim faith was ‘making colleagues uncomfortable’. A few hours after the Sunday Times reports surfaced, Chief Whip Mark
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Poor Mark Spencer. The whips’ office and its much-maligned chief have been in the firing line this week over their poor tactics and weak political intelligence, having been accused of deploying bully-boy tactics while conversely failing to protect their embattled PM. Spencer has, reportedly, accepted his fate and the fact he is ‘very much much on his way
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The mood in Westminster has gone somewhat quiet over the past two days, after Christian Wakeford’s defection on Wednesday stopped the momentum of Tory plotters in parliament. But for a few hours yesterday, passions came alive once more – this time on an issue of policy. Foreign Office minister Amanda Milling was dragged to the
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The statistical shenanigans of the SNP have been highlighted by Mr S before but it’s always worth highlighting when the nationalist Holyrood government gets it wrong (again). At First Minister’s Questions yesterday, Nicola Sturgeon told colleagues that England’s infection rate is 20 per cent higher than that of Scotland, according to ONS figures. A surprising figure, given
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It’s all a bit of a soap opera over at No. 10. Tears, screams, tantrums, mess everywhere — and that’s just Boris’s children Wilf and Romy. The papers are full of talk of ‘the good king with bad advisers’ as various sources speculate that one or more of the whips’ office, special adviser team and the
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Oh dear. Tory loyalists have been out in force the past two days, desperate to save Boris Johnson’s flailing premiership. Mr S has heard of at least one boosterish Boris-backer quoting the words of Margaret Thatcher in November 1990: ‘I shall fight on, I fight to win!’ Unfortunately, as another MP muttered back: ‘Maggie resigned
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The ‘baby-faced assassin’ has struck again. William Wragg, the backbench Boris-basher, lobbed another grenade at the door of No. 10 today with his comments at the Public Administration and Constitutional Affairs Committee about the tactics being used by the Johnson regime. Wragg, who possesses the name of a septuagenarian but the appearance of an adolescent, claimed that
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It’s Burns night on Tuesday and after two years of pandemic politics, what better time to celebrate the Union? Yesterday evening Tory unionists piled into the opulent splendour of the the Cavalry and Guards Club for the London branch of the Scottish Conservatives’ annual celebration of the national poet. Steerpike’s spies were in attendance to enjoy
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Money is very important to Harry and Meghan – as evidenced by their multi-million dollar deals with a string of top companies. Not for them, ‘go woke, go broke’: their philanthropic vehicle Archewell raised less than £37,000 for their charities up until June last year, with more being spent on legal fees to dissolve their previous
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Amid all yesterday’s defection drama, it was easy to miss that Boris Johnson announced the scrapping of his ‘Plan B’ Covid measures. Such a move has not gone down well among the more hysterical elements of Covid Twitter who appear to see the restoration of civil liberties as a dastardly Tory plot to privatise the
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Partygate may be what does for Boris but it was the North Shropshire by-election which triggered the landslide. The fallout from the disastrous decision to contest Owen Paterson’s suspension by the Parliamentary Commissioner for Standards has fuelled the anger and discontent which now leaves Johnson clinging on the precipice. For in losing a constituency which had
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Labour have made much of Christian Wakeford’s defection today. The party is keen to show it has moved on from the Corbyn era, with some pointing to Wakeford’s staunch support of the Jewish community in Bury as proof that Starmer has successfully detoxified Labour’s brand. It’s the first direct Tory defection to Labour in 15 years and gave
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It never rains but it pours. Boris Johnson began PMQs just minutes after backbencher Christian Wakeford defected to Labour, with the subsequent session largely consisting of Keir Starmer and opposition MPs laughing at the Prime Minister’s current difficulties. But the highlight was undoubtedly senior backbencher calling for Johnson to go, quoting the words of Oliver Cromwell
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Defecting Tory MP Christian Wakeford did not mince his words in his letter to Boris Johnson, informing the PM of his decision to switch to the Labour party. ‘You and the Conservative party as a whole have shown themselves incapable of offering the leadership and government this country deserves,’ he wrote. Wakeford is no stranger to
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Roll up, roll up: the leadership game is afoot. Every Tory with a smidgen of ambition is out on manoeuvres, flashing their ankles like a Victorian courtesan. All the aspirant ‘big beasts’ are getting in on the act: Jeremy Hunt is doing interviews, Liz Truss is hosting drinks at 5 Hertford Street while Penny Mordaunt is getting glowing profiles too. Most
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Boris Johnson is now facing the gravest peril of his premiership. A rising number of Conservative MPs have broken cover to publicly join calls for the PM to go, amid rising concern about what Johnson’s survival means for their electoral prospects. So will the threshold of 54 Tory MPs – the number needed to trigger a vote
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It’s not just MPs who are abandoning faith in Boris Johnson. The embattled PM appears to have alienated the entire state of Ghana in his latest efforts to save his faltering premiership. Last summer the Tory leader was all smiles with Ghanian President Nana Akufo-Addo, as the two joked around at the global education finance summit in
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‘Let’s wait for Sue Gray’ have been the five words on every ministers’ lips this past week, at least publicly. But following Dominic Cummings’s explosive claims last night that Boris Johnson lied to parliament, the PM was forced to break his silence. On a visit to a London hospital this morning, the embattled premier was asked
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Now that the government has stuck its neck out and frozen the BBC licence fee, will its next target be the Met Office? Our national weather forecasting service – which derives most of its income from arrangements with government departments – is certainly not going out of its way to make friends in government with
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It doesn’t say much for this government that Dominic Grieve can run rings around them. An amendment drafted by the ardent Remainiac was just one of 14 defeats inflicted by the Lords last night as peers opted to torpedo Priti Patel’s flagship Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill. Cue a crowing press release from Grieve’s
