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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Gary Lineker may have been finally forced out of the Beeb, but the ex-footballer is still managing to make headlines. Now it transpires that the son of the late award-winning football journalist Brian Glanville – who was made football correspondent for the Sunday Times in 1958 and covered every World Cup for the next 44
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Oh dear. It sounds as though Rachel Reeves was something of a bust at the big CBI shindig last night at the swish 8 Northumberland Avenue venue in central London. It was barely seven months ago that the Chancellor confidently promised the lobby group in the same room that ‘We’re not going to be coming
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There’s trouble in paradise, it seems. Perhaps the most eye-catching moment at yesterday’s PMQs came when Sarah Pochin, Reform’s newest MP, stood up to grill Keir Starmer for the first time. The moment was heavily trailed by deputy leader Richard Tice, who promised it would be ‘interesting’ in a video on X. Pochin duly rose
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Tree-hugging isn’t just for the Greens, it seems – as former Tory leadership contender James Cleverly will insist this evening. At a London event tonight, the ex-Foreign Secretary will make the case that Conservatives should care about the climate and urge his colleagues to reject ‘both the luddite Left and the luddite Right’ on green
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As ever, these days the Beeb is better at becoming the news than making it. Now the White House has taken a pop at the corporation, with President Donald Trump’s press secretary Karoline Leavitt accusing the BBC of having to correct its reporting from Gaza about aid distribution – and of taking Hamas’s word as
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Dear oh dear. Mr S offers his condolences to anyone who tuned into Defence Secretary John Healey’s car crash interview with LBC’s Nick Ferrari this morning. The Labour man stumbled his way through a rather excruciating conversation, in which Ferrari took him to task over his defence plan’s figures. Starting on submarines, the LBC host
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To BBC Newsnight, where Deputy Chief Constable Becky Riggs – the national policing lead on child protection and abuse investigations – has hit back at claims by shadow justice secretary Robert Jenrick about grooming gangs. Speaking on the programme last night, Riggs said it was ‘not true’ that these types of crimes are committed predominately
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Sir Keir Starmer’s Labour lot are in the bad books with Speaker Lindsay Hoyle after details of the government’s Strategic Defence Review mysteriously appeared in several newspapers before the Prime Minister’s speech this morning. The Speaker was rather unimpressed with the whole thing – given he has had to remind Starmer’s army on multiple occasions
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It’s all go in Scotland today. Nigel Farage made a quick stop in Aberdeen to announce his latest Tory defector before hopping in a helicopter to Hamilton to reveal his party’s first Labour defector: Renfrewshire councillor Jamie McGuire. The 24-year-old has represented the Renfrew North and Braehead ward on the Renfrewshire council for just over
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To Scotland, where Nigel Farage is visiting for the first time in six years. It’s a day of firsts for Reform UK, it seems, as the party announced this morning it had recruited ex-Tory councillor Duncan Massey – the first local councillor in Granite City to join Farage’s crowd. Massey is the 14th councillor to
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Well, well, well. The general secretary of the Scottish Trades Union Congress has found herself at the centre of a rather embarrassing scandal. It transpires that Roz Foyer – who has repeatedly blasted second home ownership – owns a total of, er, five homes, including a flat in Spain as well as a £100,000 plot
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To Scotland, where once Britain’s greatest schools were found. These days, sadly, that can no longer be said, thanks to the SNP’s mismanagement over the past 18 years in office. One of those who served as a minister in its wretched regime was Ash Regan, who held the Scottish Government’s Community Safety brief from 2018
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Another day, another bit of bad press for the Labour party. Attorney General Lord Hermer sparked outrage when he compared political threats to leave the ECHR to the Nazis during a speech to the Royal Institute for International Affairs (RUSI) defence think tank on Thursday – and has since acknowledged, rather begrudgingly, that his ‘choice of
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As if the Attorney General hadn’t proven his ability for conjuring up negative headlines enough, Lord Hermer took it upon himself on Thursday to compare political threats to leave the ECHR to the Nazis. Speaking to the Royal Institute for International Affairs (RUSI) defence think tank, Hermer earnestly told his audience: ‘The claim that international law
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Whatever happened to that £22bn black hole, eh? As yet more pay rises are dolled out to workers across the country this month, Mr S has been scouring the government’s transparency data to take a closer look at just how many times ministers have met with union barons. The conclusion? Quite a lot. In fact, in just six
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To Liverpool, where former Royal Marine Paul Doyle has been charged over the car crash that injured almost 80 people on Monday. Police announced they had taken a 53-year-old white British man into custody within hours of the attack and this afternoon, officers announced at a presser that Doyle had been charged with two counts
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They say that if you’re tired of London, you’re tired of life. But these days the capital’s commuters seem to certainly be tiring of the state of the public transport system. The ever-online Robert Jenrick has today released a new video, highlighting the impotence with which fare-dodgers can flagrantly get away without paying. And Mr
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To shadow justice secretary, Robert Jenrick. The onetime Tory leadership contender has taken to Twitter to make a dig at Labour’s London mayor Sadiq Khan over TfL’s fee-dodgers. ‘Sadiq Khan is driving a proud city into the ground,’ Jenrick wrote furiously. ‘Lawbreaking is out of control. He’s not acting. So I did.’ What follows is
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To NHS Fife, which is once again making headlines for all the wrong reasons. The Scottish health board has been slammed by the country’s information tsar for failing to publish its spend on an ongoing employment tribunal brought against it by nurse Sandie Peggie. Whatever happened to transparency, eh? After nurse Peggie questioned a transgender
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Egad! Uproar in clubland. The reason? Nigel Farage. Yes, it seems that the veteran Brexiteer is still capable of causing a fuss among t’great and t’good – even when he is pledging to, er, lift the two child benefit cap. The Reform UK leader gave a big speech on Tuesday in Whitehall, talking about his