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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Amid all the hubbub of cheese, wine and garden parties, it can be hard to focus on non-Covid matters. Still, one Tory MP appears to have managed it, given the decision of Jesse Norman today to table an amendment to the Higher Education (Freedom of Speech) Bill. Norman, whose motion is seconded by a trio of well-respected colleagues
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To look at the House of Commons this morning, you’d have thought Labour won the last election. The green benches on the government side were bereft of the usual Tory hordes, while the opposition was crammed with jeering Labour backbenchers. The reason? The Speaker Lindsay Hoyle had granted an Urgent Question on the subject of No.
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Oh dear. It seems the great government post-Christmas reset isn’t going all too well after last night’s revelation that Downing Street staff were invited to a drinks party in the No. 10 garden during the first national lockdown. Martin Reynolds, the PM’s Principal Private Secretary, sent an email on 20 May 2020 to more than 100 people asking them
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Budgets can be tricky things to manage. George Osborne saw two of his unravel in 2012 and 2016, over hot pasties and welfare cuts respectively, while his 2013 effort was derailed by the Evening Standard breaking its embargo. Thankfully Rishi Sunak has largely avoided such embarrassments in his three efforts so far. Helped by a legion of Rolls-Royce civil
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Over Christmas, Steerpike was just one of those enjoying the memoirs of doughty Brexit street-fighter Mark Francois. Some 4,000 copies have now been sold, according to the Essex MP, whom Mr S encountered at a favourite Westminster haunt last week. And book sales are not the only cause for the self-styled ‘Spartan’ to be celebrating, as Francois (successfully)
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It seems the government reset isn’t going exactly to plan. Michael Gove, Boris Johnson’s trouble-shooter, was due to appear on Radio 4’s Today programme in the coveted 8:10 a.m slot this morning to explain how he has finally solved the long-running cladding crisis as part of his housing brief. But what should have been a moment of triumph turned into
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Victoria sponge, cherries jubilee and coronation chicken: a trio of Britain’s best loved foods, all of which share a monarchical theme. Each of these dishes was either created for a member of the Royal Family or to mark a royal occasion, with the three being respectively linked to Queen Victoria, her diamond jubilee in 1897 and finally our own current Queen’s coronation in
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Andy Burnham has been undergoing something of a transformation in recent years. Gone is the Cambridge-educated career politician who underperformed in successive Labour leadership contests. Now he’s reborn as the king of the north, an omnipotent Manchester mayor with fans across the capital and the country. His pugilist credentials have been honed by savvy social media skills, with Burnham
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Once upon a time it was the ‘Notting Hill set’ which ran the Tory party, with David Cameron, George Osborne and Michael Gove all boasting homes there. Now though, the Cameroons are largely gone and if there can be said to be an alternative London clique, it will be found seven miles south, in the leafy
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One of the many things Priti Patel brought with her to the Home Office was a renewed focus on the ‘war on drugs’. Since her appointment in 2019, the Witham MP has made her distaste for substance abuse clear, accompanying police on house raids, deporting foreign dealers, declaring war on ‘county lines’ gangs and threatening ‘tough action’
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Since becoming Health Secretary there has been one big question Sajid Javid cannot answer: how can he justify firing a worker who has recovered from Covid, has antibodies and doesn’t want the vaccine? Javid first did this with unjabbed care home workers and now plans to fire unjabbed NHS doctors. Today he met one of them —
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Britain’s leading universities are just one sector having to grapple with the recent decline in UK-China relations. Barely six years ago David Cameron was speaking of a new ‘golden age’ of partnership between the two nations but all that has changed after the Hong Kong crackdown and Xinjiang atrocities. Now there is pressure in both
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Boris Johnson isn’t the only party leader doing renovations it seems. The newly updated parliamentary register of interests has been released this week, two months after the Owen Paterson scandal triggered an exodus of MPs from their second jobs. Not all though appear to have embraced the new hair shirt mentality though, with Sir Keir Starmer declaring
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Looking back, it wasn’t a great 2021 for LGBT+ group Stonewall. There were the allegations it misrepresented the law in its advice to Essex University, accusations from founder Matthew Parris that it was trying to delegitimise critics and the ongoing exodus of Whitehall departments from its much-criticised diversity scheme. But despite all this controversy, the charity’s latest
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She is the glamorous blonde who’s the talk of the town. Enterprising, ambitious, sharp-elbowed, with a career that embodies the Fiat 500 Tory dream. A charismatic, self-made woman whose free market philosophy of selfish individualism will make her the toast of Thatcherites everywhere. No, not Liz Truss; but rather Love Island contestant Molly-Mae Hague. For the Foreign Secretary isn’t the only liberty-lover
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At long last, the flatgate letters are out. Boris Johnson has today been cleared by his ethics adviser Lord Geidt of deliberately misleading an investigation into the funding of his Downing Street flat refurbishment – despite being accused of acting ‘unwisely’. Geidt had previously cleared Johnson of breaking the ministerial code over allegations of soliciting a donation from Lord
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The booster rollout continues at pace but not all Westminster are happy with efforts to increase vaccine take-up. Tory backbencher Danny Kruger popped up in the Commons today to ask the Leader of the House for time to debate compulsory vaccination for NHS workers. All healthcare staff must be jabbed by 1 April or risk facing
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Fallen idols are something of a trend in Bristol at the moment. But as controversy rages over the Colston statue toppling, another is brewing at the local university. For staff there are refusing to reveal the costs and identity of the top QC who led the investigation into the long-running David Miller saga. The controversial
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Twitter is a strange place: a rich source of (often unintentional) humour, populated by the puritanical and the po-faced. One such example was provided in May last year, when Dr Pete Newbon, a lecturer in humanities at Northumbria University, ended up being investigated by his employer for making fun of Jeremy Corbyn. His crime? Tweeting a picture
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Sadiq Khan is always on the lookout for any way in to national debate, and this week he has been starting – quite rightly – to focus on the benefits of vaccination. But the key to doing this effectively is not to say stuff that’s not true. Here, he struggles. After the No. 10 press