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 difficult time for liberty lovers in the cabinet. The country is £400 billion in debt, the risk of Covid restrictions linger on and there’s a Prime Minister addicted to spending. Luckily though, while the convention of collective responsibility binds our ministers tightly, it cannot entirely gag them. Jacob Rees-Mogg, the leader of the House
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Certain dates will go down in the annals of Brexit: 23 June 2016, 12 December 2019 and 31 January 2021. To that pantheon can now be added 6 December 2021 – for today is the day that Mark Francois, a proud Brexiteer and longtime member of the European Research Group (ERG), released his memoirs titled ‘Spartan Victory:
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The University of Durham has boasted many distinguished students over the years: Sir Harold Evans, Justin Welby, Andrew Strauss and even the worst 007, George Lazenby. But it seems the current crop of angry undergraduates are not so keen on old-fashioned notions of argument and debate. For Friday night saw the good neophytes of South College attempt
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It’s the most wonderful time of the year – except if you’re working in Boris Johnson’s press office. Much has been made in recent days of No. 10’s lockdown shenanigans, amid reports that Boris Johnson’s aides threw a party last December when London was under Tier 3 restrictions, which banned mixing between households. According to the Daily Mirror, about
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The Tories retained Bexley and Sidcup last week without too much trouble, holding the longtime safe seat despite the government’s current troubles. But now, another by-election looms in a Conservative stronghold, where a shock upset may be even more likely. For next Thursday is the contest in North Shropshire to find Owen Paterson’s replacement, following the
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‘We are intensely relaxed about people getting filthy rich’, once drawled Peter Mandelson, ‘as long as they pay their taxes.’ And it seems the socialist Svengali is practising what he preached, with his latest appointment at a new British bank. William Hague famously mocked the New Labour spin doctor for his many honorifics during the
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There’s a spectre haunting British politics: the spectre of Peppa Pig. It seems the fictitious children’s character has become the new fault line in Westminster, following Boris Johnson’s lauding of the pink porker at the CBI conference. Seeking clear blue water between himself and the Tories, Sir Keir Starmer has used an interview in today’s
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It’s been many years since the Labour party first idolised the Soviet Union, but it appears that the left’s lingering love affair with communist states is still hard to shake off. The Labour MP Richard Burgon kept the red flag flying last night when he appeared on Iain Dale’s LBC radio show. As the panel
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Oh no! What’s behind the cancellation of GETTR’s ‘Counter Conference’? The right wing festival – due to take place later this month – had promised to tackle cancel culture with a roster of speakers featuring Nigel Farage, Laurence Fox and several US Trump supporters. The organisers had ambitiously booked the O2 Indigo Centre, which has a capacity of almost
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Since Liz Truss was appointed Foreign Secretary in Boris Johnson’s reshuffle, she has upped the ante when it comes to the visual element of the job. As well as appointing a new special adviser focussed on social media (who can no doubt compete with Rishi Sunak’s own social media whizz kid Cass Horowitz), Truss rarely
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It may be the worst kept secret in France but Eric Zemmour will tomorrow announce his candidacy for his country’s presidential election, according to a source on his campaign team. It is, in one sense, confirmation of the obvious: it’s been clear for some months now to everyone who follows French politics that Monsieur Z is running
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Whether it’s Labour and Plaid in Wales, the SNP and Greens in Scotland or Red Wallers and free-marketeers within Westminster, it’s an interesting time for political alliances at present. But Mr S brings news of a fresh new cross-party effort to raise the eyebrows of even those cynical veterans of the ChangeUK years. Esther McVey
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As a former court room, the No. 9 Downing Street briefing hub has seen its fair share of drama – and none more so than this past year. Some £2.9 million was lavished on turning the site into a state-of-the-art stage for press conferences, amid plans to televise government briefings with the parliamentary lobby. But all that
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It’s the SNP’s second annual national conference this weekend and already the organ-grinders are turning out their favourite hits. The National – a self-described newspaper in breach of the Trade Descriptions Act – has again combined the stridency of Pravda with the editorial values of the Beano. Adoring coverage of the conference was kicked off with its
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All too often, the massed rows behind Nicola Sturgeon at FMQs can resemble a scene from one of Stalin’s party congresses. Row after row of poker-faced nationalists dutifully banging their desks at the latest edict from on high, interjecting occasionally with the latest pre-approved attack line or standard softball question to the Dear Leader: an army
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Irony has been declared many times in this pandemic but now, from Covid-riddled Germany comes the final proof: you can’t kill yourself now unless you’ve been vaccinated. As European countries battle to limit the spread of the virus, Verein Sterbehilfe – the German Euthanasia Association – has issued a new directive, declaring it will now only help those who
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Bob Crowe may have passed on but his spirit lives on. The militant Marxist’s Rail, Maritime and Transport (RMT) trade union is on a 24-hour strike today in a dispute over changes to drivers’ rotas as Sadiq Khan seeks to bring back the night Tube. Union heavies on the Jubilee, Victoria, Piccadilly, Central and Northern
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For months now, Mr S has chronicled the tribulations of Susan Aitken, who is the first SNP leader of Glasgow City Council and appears determined to be the last, too. She has presided over a waste crisis in which refuse-strewn streets have become a familiar sight even in the city’s leafier suburbs and which threatened to
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Boris couldn’t make it but fortunately there was one Tory premier at last night’s Spectator parliamentarian awards. Former Prime Minister Theresa May appeared to be having the time of her life at the star-studded bash, rocking a fabulous blue number and waltzing up on stage to win Backbencher of the Year to the strains of
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After eighteen months of Covid, it was with a sense of relief and joy that MPs, peers, bag-carriers and hangers-on descended on London’s Rosewood Hotel. After all the twists and turns of the pandemic’s politics, ministers and opposite numbers enjoyed the chance to break bread and hear from some of Parliament’s leading figures collecting gongs
