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

Friday

Steerpike

Does Twitter think Trump is worse than Russia?

From our UK edition

Who decides what gets counted as ‘misinformation’? For the increasingly large number of people who get their news from social media the answer these days is probably Facebook or Twitter, which in recent years have become far more powerful than any old press baron. This became particularly apparent during the tail end of the Donald Trump era, when Twitter began slapping fake news labels on the outgoing president’s tweets. As Trump rallied against the results of the 2020 presidential election, Twitter responded by hiding his tweets behind warning labels which said their content was ‘disputed’ or ‘might be misleading’.

Wednesday

Steerpike

Petrol states splash the cash for MPs

From our UK edition

Boris Johnson is out in Saudi Arabia, urging Mohammed bin Salman to turn on the oil taps again. But the Prime Minister isn't the only politician who's been able to sample the delights of the Middle East this year. No less than nine of his parliamentary colleagues jetted out to the region last month, running up a total bill of more than £44,000 in flights and hospitality to Qatar and the UAE. The Qatar push is especially interesting, given the forthcoming World Cup scheduled to be held there. Some £15,460 was spent in February on flying four MPs including former Defence Secretary Sir Gavin Williamson out to the tiny Gulf state. Indeed Qatar's lobbying efforts in the UK since winning the right to host the FIFA tournament have been considerable.

Steerpike

Now the cybernats come for students

From our UK edition

Something is rotten in the state of Scotland. No, not the creaking CalMac ferry fleet but rather the health of free speech in the birthplace of the Enlightenment. The warning signs have been there for years now, what with the Hate Crime Act, the Scottish government's efforts to evade Holyrood scrutiny and the SNP's own intolerance for any kind of internal party dissent. But now a minor episode at a leading university perhaps best illustrates the sorry state of the right to dissent in Nicola Sturgeon's Scotland. Students at the University of St Andrews last week published a short satirical article in their magazine the Saint, making fun of relations between London and Edinburgh.

Steerpike

Fact check: did Farage get £548,000 from Russia?

From our UK edition

Chris Bryant has been keen to make the most of the Ukraine crisis, demanding greater sanctions on Putin's cronies at every turn. The Labour MP scored an early hit when he used parliamentary privilege to reveal that Chelsea owner Roman Abramovich was identified by the Home Office in 2019 as having links to the Russian state as well as to 'corrupt activity and practices.'  But his latest effort to repeat the stunt seems to have backfired somewhat, after the Standards Committee chair turned his guns on a new target: Nigel Farage. Bryant read out a list of names to MPs yesterday, demanding that further sanctions be imposed on them too. He told the Commons:  I am mystified at why some people are still missing from the list, including some of the broadcasters...

Tuesday

Steerpike

Why do Russian tennis stars need to condemn Putin?

From our UK edition

Nigel Huddleston is Under-Secretary of State for Sport, Tourism, Heritage and Civil Society, hardly the biggest job in government. Yet he seems a little inebriated on what little authority he has – at least if his latest remarks to the Department for the Digital, Culture, Media and Sport committee are anything to go by. Huddleston has taken on board the mood of the moment. He appreciates that sport must make a stand against Vlad the Invader and the invasion of Ukraine, and which sensible person would disagree? But boycotting Russia from major competitions and clamping down on dodgy oligarch football owners isn’t sufficient, apparently. Huddleston wants more.

Steerpike

Have sleazebusters gone soft on MPs?

From our UK edition

It was just 12 weeks ago that a sleaze scandal threatened to rock the Commons to its core. Owen Paterson’s efforts to overturn the findings of a probe into his lobbying activities triggered weeks of revelations, controversy and bad headlines about MPs’ outside earnings and second jobs. But three months on, are things going back to the bad old ways already? Take the register of members’ interests, on which our elected masters detail their consultancies, part-time gigs and share dealings. This list – supposedly designed to encourage transparency and enable scrutiny – is already difficult to scrutinise. Data scientists complain that it lists information in a highly variable free text format and is both not machine readable or available via bulk download.

Steerpike

Coming soon: Barry Gardiner – The Movie

From our UK edition

With the BAFTAs last Sunday and the Oscars next week, film award season is well underway. And while it's too late for new entries this year, Mr S hears of a dark horse for next year's competitions. Step forward, Labour's Barry Gardiner, who is the unlikely star of a documentary about his recent private members' bill to ban 'fire and rehire' practices. Gardiner, Jeremy Corbyn's colourful shadow trade secretary, ran a series of eye-catching stunts to raise publicity for the campaign, including gatecrashing the 1922 drinks at Tory party conference: a move that prompted frenzied speculation of an imminent defection. His efforts to change the law might have been unsuccessful but at least they have been captured for posterity.

Steerpike

Watch: peer rapped for snoozing

From our UK edition

War in Ukraine, soaring inflation, spiralling energy bills and the shadow of the bomb – things are all looking pretty grim in Westminster at present. So what better place to find solace and a quiet moment to reflect than the rarified atmosphere of the House of Lords? Unfortunately for one septuagenarian, meditative contemplation went slightly too far yesterday after the ageing peer accidentally drifted off to sleep. The offender in question was the ironically named Anthony Young, who at 79, is by no means the oldest member of their noble lords' chamber. Popping up last night in the genetically modified organisms debate, Lord Young, a trade unionist and Labour party peer, was slapped down by the indignant Baroness Bloomfield.

Monday

Steerpike

Macron, the reverse Zelensky

From our UK edition

Which Western leader has been the most shameless when it comes to Ukraine? America's Vice President 'Calamity' Kamala Harris is another contender, given her bizarre, hysterical laughter when asked at a press conference about Kiev's refugees. Nicola 'Strangelove' Sturgeon is up there, after her no-fly zone intervention while Mario Draghi looked like Marie Antoinette without her charms after reportedly demanding opt-outs from sanctions on luxury Italian goods. But for Mr S, there's only one winner. Step forth Emmanuel Macron, the politician whose pronouns are moi/moi/moi.

Steerpike

Sturgeon’s pay rise grandstanding

From our UK edition

After apologising to witches and advocating nuclear armageddon, what next for Nicola Sturgeon? Why, a healthy dollop of virtue-signalling, of course. The selfie-loving satrap spotted an opportunity to put some clear blue water between her and Westminster this morning, leaping on a tweet from today's No. 10 briefing that confirmed Boris Johnson would accept the forthcoming pay rise being given by IPSA to all MPs. Sturgeon declared to her 1.4 million followers on Twitter that: Ministers in @scotgov have not taken a pay rise since 2008 and I can confirm we will not do so this year either. We donate increases back to the public purse for spending on services. Where there is a will there is a way. Noble stuff.

Steerpike

Matt Hancock’s refugee embrace

From our UK edition

Who should be on this year's Honours' List? For Mr Steerpike, the answer is clear: Matt Hancock, MBE, for services to comedy. In recent months the rule-breaking romantic has performed a series of eye-catching antics to try and aid his bid back to power.  There was the Capital Jingle Bell Ball where he rocked up with Gina looking like a metrosexual Bond villain. There was the Serpentine swimming sesh when he ended up in hot water and the excruciating podcast interview in which he spoke about casual sex. And then of course there was the HarperCollins incident where the American publishing house had to distance themselves from reports Hancock was planning a self-justificatory Covid memoir.

Steerpike

Saj’s struggling NHS revolution

From our UK edition

Sajid Javid was something of a breath of fresh air when he was appointed as Health Secretary last June. Gone was the libidinous, lockdown-loving Matt Hancock; in came the Thatcherite free-marketeer promising a 'return to normalcy.' Since then, some of the shine has come off the Saj. First, there was the debacle over Covid passes at Christmas. And now the Health Secretary faces the perennial problem which faced his predecessors: how to pay for a creaking health service with an ageing population? In his first major policy speech last week, Javid spoke candidly to the Royal College of Physicians (RCP). He warned that the NHS is on an 'unsustainable financial trajectory' and urged new methods to 'reduce costs.

Steerpike

Priti’s battle against tech giants backfires

From our UK edition

Priti Patel is not a fan of big tech. The Home Secretary has spent much of her three years in office decrying the giants of Silicon Valley, frequently railing against the likes of Facebook, TikTok and Twitter for various failings. She's ordered them to remove posts promoting illegal Channel crossings, 'live up to their moral duty' by tackling online child abuse and attacked them for publishing 'appalling hate' on their platforms. Her department has also mooted banning online anonymity and proposed an advertising campaign which criticises Facebook for daring to use end-to-end encryption for its messages. Given all the dastardly things which occur on their platforms, just who exactly is funding such firms?

Sunday

Steerpike

Will Gove host a refugee?

From our UK edition

Whoops! Cripes! The government is in another mess. The cry goes out: send for Gove. Like the elegant Jeeves to Boris's Bertie Wooster, he answers his master's desperate call, ready to extricate him from another self-inflicted mess. Now the PM's latest troubles are not aunts but Ukrainians and the many thousands now fleeing their country.  The Home Office are predictably ineffective so it's once more unto the breach for the oleaginous Aberdonian, the man with more jobs than George Osborne. Levelling up, saving the Union, intergovernmental relations and now processing refugees: is there anything the Gover can't do?

Friday

Steerpike

John Bercow’s unlikely rehabilitation

From our UK edition

It's been a tough week for poor John Bercow. The release of the report by the Parliamentary Commissioner for Standards into his Speakership on Tuesday saw 21 counts of bullying being upheld against him. Since then there have been calls for universities to strip him of his academic posts, while Commons bosses have delivered the ultimate insult: removing his name from the parliamentary gym spin room. Talk about purging the last remnants of a hated former regime. And Steerpike can reveal that Bercow has also now quit as a trustee of Holland Park school, known as 'the socialist Eton'. His term was due to end in November 2024.

Thursday

Steerpike

BBC redundancy costs triple

From our UK edition

It's been a difficult year for the BBC. Whether it's Emily Maitlis or Peter Crouch, Andrew Marr or Simon McCoy, a whole host of stars have departed the Beeb as the corporation battles to remain relevant in the twentieth first-century. Budget cuts and increased competition mean that journalists with more than 1,000 years of experience have taken redundancy, retired or accepted big money deals from commercial rivals over the past two years. The mass exits have prompted fears of a 'brain drain' of talent with insiders expressing concerns about the difficulties of filling the smorgasbord of top posts which are currently vacant. Now a Freedom of Information request by Mr S has revealed the cost of all these departures to the corporation's hard-pressed coffers.

Steerpike

Universities stand by Bercow

From our UK edition

Normally when a public figure is 'cancelled' there is an ungainly rush by institutions to distance themselves from the individual in question. Fortunately for John Bercow, his impact on public life was so limited that there are few bodies left to cut him off. Certain actions though must sting the former Speaker's pride: his suspension from the Labour party for instance and the decision of the parliamentary gym to rename the spin room named after him.  Following Tuesday's publication of the report into bullying claims against him, Bercow is now without an office, without a seat, without a party and without a legacy.

Steerpike

Alan Duncan loses out (again)

From our UK edition

To the Commons, where last night the cream of Westminster's literary elite were sipping chablis and comparing book sales. Rising stars and old faces were among those turning out at the parliamentary book awards as Ed Balls, Mark Carney, Jess Phillips and Andrew Mitchell were among the political giants rubbing shoulders. The star of the night though was undoubtedly Sir Alan Duncan, back in parliament after two years away having, for some reason, not been given a peerage in the recent honours' list. The former MP is now trying to do for Bloomsbury what he did for Westminster by applying his political talents to the written word, having penned a series of remarkably bitter diaries last year that boasted more poison-penmanship than Jessica Mitford.

Steerpike

BBC political editor race narrows to final four

From our UK edition

Laura Kuenssberg leaves her post at the end of this month, with the incumbent BBC political editor receiving a suitable send-off from her female lobby colleagues last night. After nearly seven years in the post, Kuenssberg will step down from the biggest job in political journalism on 31 March. But can anyone fill her shoes? Efforts to replace her thus far have resembled something like Wacky Races as candidate after candidate has cleared the pitch – whether by personal volition or the BBC powers that be. Early favourite Vicki Young declined to put herself forward while Yorkshireman Chris Mason opted to keep his Any Questions? slot.

Wednesday

Steerpike

Sturgeon: Nato shouldn’t rule out no-fly zone

From our UK edition

Fresh from apologising for the persecution of witches in the sixteenth century, Nicola Sturgeon has now jumped on to the next big challenge. You'd have thought the energy, cost-of-living and health crises might keep the First Minister occupied, not to mention the various issues around Scotland's schools, transport links and criminal justice system.  Not a bit of it. For the nationalist-in-chief has found a new cause to involve herself in: international relations, an area specifically reserved for Westminster. Despite having no powers, mandate or army, Sturgeon today decided to take a swipe at Nato, using an interview with ITV to argue the defence bloc should review the idea of a 'no-fly zone' over Ukraine on a 'day to day basis.