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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After a long and often unpleasant campaign, the Batley and Spen by-election is over, with Labour managing to cling on to the seat. Labour’s candidate, Kim Leadbeater, won a paper-thin majority of 323 votes over the Tory candidate, with George Galloway trailing around 5,000 votes behind Labour. Galloway was certainly not happy with the result
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At long last, the bloody, bruising and bitter Batley and Spen by-election is at an end. After eight weeks of campaigning, replete with controversy and allegations of harassment, the results will be finally declared at 5am on Friday morning in this Labour held-seat facing a stiff Tory challenge. If Keir Starmer’s party loses tomorrow it
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Yesterday the US comedian Bill Cosby left prison, after the Philadelphia Supreme Court overturned his conviction for sexual assault in 2018. The 83-year-old Cosby had served two years of a three-to-ten-year sentence, before his verdict was overturned on Wednesday because of a ‘process violation’. For a brief moment yesterday though, it appeared that the story
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Dilyn may be top dog in Number 10 but these days there’s only breed of choice for the aspiring Tory: a fox red Labrador. Chancellor Rishi Sunak is photographed in today’s newspapers clutching his new eight week old puppy Nova. And while his next door neighbour Boris Johnson has an (appropriately) badly-behaved, chaotic and randy
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It’s by-election day in Batley and Spen tomorrow. The only constituency polling done in the West Yorkshire seat suggests that the Tories stand a good chance of grabbing it off Labour, with the intervention of George Galloway threatening to turn the seat blue for the first time since 1997. In recent weeks there has been much commentary
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It has been a busy month for Dawn Butler. Whether it’s joining Cameo, backfiring Twitter polls or even being an apparent contender for the Labour leadership, she has rarely kept away from the headlines. In such circumstances, it’s no surprise then that Butler’s services have at last been recognised, with the MP herself excitedly tweeting how
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Much ink has been spilled over the shenanigans of the James Dornan, SNP MSP and amateur Hate-Finder General. Just last week the gaffe-prone Glaswegian was forced to apologise for suggesting that an Edinburgh bus company had stopped services on St Patrick’s Day because of ‘anti-Irish racism,’ an unsubstantiated claim for which Dornan had no evidence. Now fresh evidence
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The Prime Minister has never been much of a football fan. Unlike David Cameron, who could never remember if he supported Aston Villa or West Ham, Boris Johnson has remained resolutely ambivalent on the subject of personal preferences by opting to choose, err, no side in the English Football League. Tonight Johnson showed his patriotic
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Since her election to Parliament in December 2019, Labour backbencher Kate Osborne has become something of a transparency campaigner. The Jarrow MP has urged the extension of Freedom of Information laws to cover private companies and criticised Conservative opponent Nadine Dorries for sharing ‘fake news propaganda’ online. But Osborne seems less keen to divulge information
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It appears the Liberal Democrats have fallen foul of the Trade Descriptions Act. During the Brexit years, the party did its best to eschew the ‘democratic’ part of their name by promising to nullify the largest democratic mandate the UK has ever seen. And now Mr Steerpike is intrigued to see that party grandees don’t seem too keen
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A heart-warming moment at the first day of Wimbledon today. In the crowd to watch matches on centre court was Professor Sarah Gilbert who developed the Oxford/AstraZeneca vaccine for coronavirus. Having spent much of 2020 working on finding a jab, the scientist was today enjoying a rare day out, having been appointed a Dame in the Birthday Honours earlier this month for
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One man’s loss is another man’s gain. Matt Hancock’s downfall has meant the return of Sajid Javid, restored to Cabinet sixteen months after his resignation in a Downing Street power struggle. Javid wasted no time in taking to the airwaves yesterday, paying the obligatory tribute to his disgraced predecessor and telling broadcasters: ‘We are still in a
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Efforts to rid Huawei from Britain’s 5G mobile network were a constant feature of Tory politics last year. The question of whether a company with links to the Chinese state should be involved in such sensitive infrastructure dominated much of 2020, culminating in Oliver Dowden’s announcement in November of a ban on Huawei in 5G networks. It followed a long-running campaign by
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A belated effort is underway to salvage the remains of Matt Hancock’s reputation. The latest line, repeated by a dutiful Brandon Lewis on Sky this morning, is that the former Health Secretary quit for the good of the country – which begs the question as to why he waited 48 hours after the news broke
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Sixth time’s the charm for Sajid Javid who takes up the health brief following Matt Hancock’s resignation. Javid, who has previously run the housing, business, culture, Treasury and home affairs departments, resigned from Boris Johnson’s government in February last year, following a power struggle with No. 10. The former Deutsche Bank executive quit after being
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Whereas once ministers were content to resign with merely an exchange of letters, the tech-savvy Matt Hancock always preferred to be a pioneer. The Health Secretary quit tonight after two days of mounting outrage at the revelations he had a fling with a taxpayer-funded aide he brought into government and did so in classic Hancock
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So much for No. 10 considering the ‘case closed.’ Matt Hancock has resigned tonight after 48 hours of fury at his fling with his taxpayer funded aide and Oxford contemporary Gina Coladangelo. The Health Secretary decided just hours before the Sunday papers dropped to go, with Mr S understanding further revelations were on the way.
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Regular readers may recall the tale of James Dornan, SNP MSP and amateur Hate-Finder General. Earlier this month, he gave a speech in the Scottish Parliament taking aim at Lothian Buses, one of Edinburgh’s main commuter services and a target of long-running antisocial behaviour. The company’s drivers recorded more than 500 such incidents in the
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These days it’s easier to work out who is leaving Keir Starmer’s team than who is still in it. Ahead of the Batley and Spen by-election next Thursday, there have been a series of moves and departures – from one-time political secretary Jenny Chapman’s demotion to a raft of departures in the comms team. After Labour’s
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Boris Johnson may consider the ‘case closed’ but what does the public think of Matt Hancock’s fling? For 15 months the embattled Health Secretary has been the face of the government’s Covid policies, appearing at dozens of press briefings and being one of the most ardent lockdown proponents in Whitehall. Given his countless interviews, statements,