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
The Speaker was not holding back this afternoon when asked by Sir Edward Leigh about Boris Johnson’s 6 p.m. Covid press conference. Lindsay Hoyle laid into the government from the Speaker’s chair, accusing ministers of disrespecting parliament for failing to inform the House first of all changes to Covid restrictions. Indeed he even claimed that
Lord Sumption was one of the starring guests on last night’s launch of GB News. The former judge, who stepped down from the Supreme Court in 2018, has enjoyed a varied career as one of Britain’s best paid barristers, a medieval historian and even as Keith Joseph’s onetime adviser but has emerged in recent months as
It’s private members’ bill week in Parliament, with lucky backbenchers who won a place in the ballot presenting their proposed laws to the Commons on Wednesday. Labour MP Barry Gardiner, who spent 24 hours in the party’s leadership race last year, is up and planning a bill to outlaw ‘fire and rehire’ tactics used by some employers to drive down pay
At long last GB News is here. After months of speculation and excitement, the first national TV channel to launch in 21 years finally launched at 8 p.m. on Sunday night with chairman Andrew Neil appropriately being the first to speak on air. He subsequently introduced various GB News stars ranging from archaeologist Neil Oliver
It has been a difficult 2021 for the British shellfish industry. Since the end of the Brexit transition period, fishermen have had to contend with new rules which mean that live mussels, cockles, oysters and other shellfish caught in most of the UK’s waters are no longer allowed to enter the EU. Legal action against the
Having pledged to ‘level up’ the country during the last election, it seems that CCHQ are determined to practice what they preach. With Treasury civil servants set to move next year across the country to a new campus at Darlington, party apparatchiks in Tory central office are following suit. Party co-chair Amanda Milling announced plans for a new hub
Tala Halawa, the BBC journalist who was found to have tweeted ‘Hitler was right’, is out at the Corporation. Almost three weeks ago, Steerpike highlighted how media watchdog organisation Honest Reporting and others had uncovered a string of tweets posted on Halawa’s Twitter account from 2014. These included pronouncing that ‘Israel is more Nazi than Hitler’ and
This morning saw the G7 summit formally kick off in Cornwall with a traditional awkward ‘family photo’ of the different premiers and presidents together. As Boris Johnson led the leaders off the stage, he turned around to be confronted with an unsettling sight: french president Emmanuel Macon clasping the septuagenarian Joe Biden to his bosom. With one
On Wednesday it was revealed that 150 Oxford academics are boycotting Oriel College and refusing to teach its students in protest at its decision to keep the Cecil Rhodes statue. Steerpike has been sent a copy of the letter – which sets out the academics’ collective view that ‘Oriel College’s decision not to remove the statue
As the nation waits to hear whether life can finally return to normal come 21 June, world leaders have jetted into Cornwall for the G7 junket in a bid to set the world to rights. Covid-19 and climate change are top of the agenda – but it isn’t all work and no play. Various social meets are
Jeremy Corbyn has spent the past few weeks going on something of a road trip of British universities. Now sitting as an independent for Islington North, Corbyn spoke at the Oxford Union last month where he was asked if he had any regrets about his time as Labour leader to which he replied: ‘Regrets? I’m really with
‘I was thrilled to meet your wife,’ Joe Biden told Boris Johnson during their first meeting at this week’s G7 summit. The PM’s eyes sunk. Where could this be going? ‘Yes, they’ve gone off to do something else,’ Boris replied, seemingly in the hope that Biden would too. The President was in a playful mood though.
In recent months Jacob Rees-Mogg has kept a low profile in Westminster. The leader of the House is kept mainly these days to the confines of managing parliamentary business with the mile-long ‘Mogg conga’ queuing system last June being one of the few occasions he has returned to the limelight. So Mr S was delighted to see the
Happy birthday Lindsay Hoyle. The Speaker of the House was bombarded with such messages today as he celebrated his 64th birthday by granting an urgent question to Yvette Cooper on the accommodation of asylum seekers at Napier Barracks. Last week, six asylum seekers won a legal challenge against the government after a judge ruled that their accommodation
First we were told it would be just 12 weeks to ‘turn the tide’; then it was that the pandemic would be over by September (2020). But now, amid yet more calls to push back the 21 June reopening date, it appears one scientist is happy for the current restrictions of social distancing to continue
Tomorrow Gordon Brown is set to release his latest messianic tome. Grandly titled Seven Ways to Change the World: How to Fix the Most Pressing Issues We Face – presumably from some of the problems he first caused – it is set to be released exactly one week after his successor Ed Miliband published a rival guide: Go
Much has been written about the reported £88,000 Downing Street flat makeover masterminded by A-list interior designer Lulu Lytle. We’re told that the new look boasts ‘Persian rugs, cream walls with gold hangings and gold chandeliers’. There’s talk of ‘gold’ wallpaper (at £840 a roll) so heavy it is now peeling off the walls. But
The end of lockdown and the dawn of summer has seen Westminster’s finest emerge once more in their best cricket whites. On Sunday two lobby teams turned out at Bromley common ground to see Harry Cole’s Chatty Bats face off against Brendan Carlin’s Cincinnati cricket club. The latter eventually triumphed by 48 runs and now have the
Things haven’t exactly been going well for French president Emmanuel Macron in recent days. Earlier this week it was reported that France is launching a doomed bid during its presidency of the EU council to ban the use of English in key meetings in favour of the French language. Now it appears that Macron has problems on
What do John Bercow, Nigel Farage, Iain Dale and Count Binface all have in common? The quartet are among the few British political commentators listed on popular celebrity video app Cameo, where celebrities charge fans to record messages. Now though the quartet has been joined by the first sitting MP to use the app: onetime Corbyn loyalist Dawn Butler.