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

Wednesday

Steerpike

Who is Sue Gray?

She’s the name that’s on everyone’s lips in Westminster. As Tory ministers flounder to defend their beleaguered leader over partygate, their oft-repeated line ‘let’s wait for Sue Gray’s inquiry’ has elevated the little-known civil servant investigating No. 10's parties into something of a Delphic oracle, the woman whose judgements could make or break a Prime Minister. But just who is the mandarin dubbed by her colleagues ‘Deputy God?’  Gray is, in some respects, a classic Whitehall mandarin. Now in her mid-sixties, she’s spent the bulk of her career climbing the rungs in the civil service since the 1970s, with stints in the Transport, Health and DWP ministries.

Tuesday

Steerpike

Tories move to stop dodgy donors

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 — Sir Robert Buckland, Robert Halfon and Damian Green — wants universities to declare all donations over £50,000 from foreign donors and list those sums in an annual register published by the Office for Students.

Steerpike

Watch: MP breaks down in tears during partygate debate

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. 10's parties in May 2020, following yesterday's revelations by ITV. Boris Johnson was busy elsewhere so the call went out for the Paymaster-General. Poor Michael Ellis was sent out for the most thankless task since the Charge of the Light Brigade, armed only with his legal training in dodging, ducking, deflecting and evading difficult questions.

Steerpike

Seven times No. 10 denied breaking Covid rules

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 to come and 'make the most of the lovely weather' and to 'bring your own booze!' Not Sir Humphrey's finest hour... Boris and Carrie Johnson are alleged to have attended the garden party too, which, er, makes something of a mockery of the Prime Minister's insistent denials that he knew of no such parties being held throughout the pandemic.

Monday

Steerpike

Wanted: a Budget co-ordinator for Rishi

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 servants – and a savvy social media team – the Richmond MP has enjoyed favourable poll ratings off the back of his well-received statements, accompanied, as always, by carefully-crafted images depicting the Chancellor at his best. But it seems all that isn't enough for the ambitious resident of No. 11.

Steerpike

Boris Johnson’s Israel entanglement

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) proposed on New Years' Eve to longtime girlfriend Olivia Sanders, the mayor of Brentwood and one half of the Posh and Becks of Essex politics. What better way to mark the first anniversary of the end of the Brexit transition period?

Steerpike

W1A: Michael Gove gets trapped in a lift

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 an episode of farce. For, in scenes straight out of W1A, the Minister for Levelling Up appears to be unable to, er, go up a level, as he spent more than half an hour trapped in one of the Corporation's lifts. An embarrassed BBC presenter Nick Robinson was forced to explain the unfolding drama live on air as Gove's interview was pushed back. https://www.youtube.com/watch?

Steerpike

Will the Queen get her just desserts?

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 1953. Now, as Her Majesty prepares to mark 70 years on the throne, the search is on to find an appropriately delectable dish to mark the Platinum Jubilee. For today a call has gone out across the land for a 'Platinum Pudding' fit for a Queen.

Sunday

Steerpike

Andy Burnham’s testing confusion

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 always keen to take a pithy pop at Westminster/the Tories/London for another egregious slight visited on the north by those avaricious creatures down south.  But could honest Andy's love of Twitter be his downfall?

Steerpike

True claims torpedo partygate defence

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 surroundings of Richmond. For the district is the power base of Carrie Johnson, who worked there for local MP Zac Goldsmith, the defra minister who now sits in the Lords alongside longtime Richmond council leader Nicholas True. The latter's daughter Sophia also works in No. 10 as a special adviser. But now a little-noticed answer by Lord True has made life slightly more tricky for Boris, Carrie, Sophia and their colleagues in No. 10.

Saturday

Steerpike

Priti’s drugs war goes up in smoke

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' on laughing gas. But is all that being let down by Dominic Raab and his colleagues over at the Ministry of Justice? For the number of drug incidents in Britain's prisons have skyrocketed by more than 350 per cent over the last seven years, with MOJ figures published this week showing the total recorded in Britain's prisons has quadrupled from 4,469 in March 2014 to 20,295 in March 2021.

Friday

Steerpike

Watch: Sajid Javid confronted by unjabbed NHS doctor

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 — and it didn’t go well. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hOlEYcd1nyI Javid’s answer? He didn’t have one During a visit to King’s College Hospital in south London, Javid was on camera talking to NHS staff asking them what they thought about his plans for compulsory vaccination. He presumably expected them to agree.

Steerpike

Will universities declare their China funding?

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 political and academic circles for greater transparency from Russell Group universities about their funding sources, amid increasing concern about the reliance of the UK's academic institutions on Chinese money. For Steerpike understands that Tory backbenchers are considering whether to table amendments to the Higher Education Bill to improve transparency for the higher education sector.

Steerpike

Keir’s £1,500 oil painting

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 receipt of a £1,500 oil painting from artist Tim Benson. Is he measuring up the No. 10 flat already? Let's hope it fits with the Lulu Lytle wallpaper. Starmer wasn't the only MP to catch Steerpike's eye. Take the tallest MP in the House, Daniel Kawczynski, the honourable member for serial controversy.

Steerpike

Truss’s Foreign Office bankrolling Stonewall

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 accounts reveal a still-reliable stream of income from one reliable source: the taxpayer. Stonewall received £1.25 million in taxpayer-funded grants in just 18 months to March 2021, according to documents published this week. This figure is a near-67 per cent increase on the £748,000 they received in their previous accounts, which covered the 12 months up until September 2019.

Thursday

Steerpike

Is Molly-Mae a Thatcherite?

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 able to make a splash they days. Mr Steerpike's favourite reality TV star has caused something of a ferocious backlash this week with her comments on a podcast preaching the virtues of hard work and equal opportunity.

Steerpike

Read in full: the Lord Geidt letters

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 Brownlow but a recent Electoral Commission investigation revealed previously unknown WhatsApp messages between Brownlow and Johnson.

Steerpike

Rees-Mogg reveals his reading material

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 the sack – one of the so-called 'Plan B' measures which Kruger reluctantly endorsed last month after wrestling with his conscience. Kruger began his question by referencing research published by the British Medical Journal shortly after the Commons voted for the package of Covid measures. It found that the effectiveness of a third vaccine wore off after three months in preventing the transmission of Omicron.

Steerpike

Bristol refuse to declare David Miller probe costs

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 academic was sacked by the University of Bristol last October, having been accused by the All-Party Parliamentary Group Against Anti-Semitism of ‘inciting hatred against Jewish students' for his comments about Israel, Zionism and the student Jewish Society.

Wednesday

Steerpike

Michael Rosen faces defamation lawsuit

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 of the former Labour leader reading to a group of schoolchildren from Michael Rosen’s We’re Going on a Bear Hunt. Only the image had been photoshopped to show Corbyn holding the Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion instead – a classic example of satire.