Steerpike, Author at The Spectator

Sunday

13 June 2021

Watch: Andrew Neil’s opening GB News manifesto

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 and columnist Mercy Muroki to the unabashed 'naughty corner' duo of former BBC anchor Simon McCoy and ex Brexit party MEP Alexandra Phillips. Declaring 'we are proud to be British' Neil told viewers: It's 8:00 p.m. on Sunday, June the thirteenth, 2021.

Steerpike

Could crabs be next on the menu for a Defra ban?

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 government has been mooted, with environment secretary George Eustice accused of misleading the industry over its post-Brexit arrangements. Given this context and the fact many fishermen live in Tory coastal seats, you might have thought the department for environment, food and rural affairs (Defra) would be doing all it can to reassure the industry.

Saturday

12 June 2021

Steerpike

CCHQ levels up its recruitment

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 in Leeds at October's virtual conference 'in the heart of the blue wall.' Now CCHQ has stepped up recruitment, advertising yesterday for its first party apprentices in Leeds in the fields of 'finance and marketing.

Friday

11 June 2021

Steerpike

‘Hitler was right’ journalist leaves BBC

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 ‘Hitler was right’. Halawa had also declared ‘ur media is controlled by ur zionist government’ and tweeted a graphic of a child being burned on a menorah, the Jewish ritual candelabrum.

Steerpike

Watch: Boris plays gooseberry at Biden-Macron bromance

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 hand behind Biden's back, Macron marched his partner across the beach, conversing as he did so while our poor PM could only watch helplessly at the affected entente cordiale. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rLMmBb8qStQ Far from being embarrassed by such a show of transatlantic tactility, Macron clearly revelled in the moment.

Steerpike

Meet the academics behind the Rhodes boycott

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 of Cecil Rhodes undermines us all' – and a full list of the co-signatories, republished here for the first time. Reading through, Mr S was struck by the number of proud imperialists who gave their names to posts currently held by the anti-Rhodes protesters.

Steerpike

The G7’s calorie-busting menu

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 on the cards as well as extravagant dinner as leaders chew over the fat. That food menu, however, is enough to make Jamie Oliver sob featuring cheese, cream and carbs galore. Only last year, Boris Johnson was telling aides that it was a bad idea to be a 'fatty' in your 50s, only Mr S is unsure the menu for G7 would get past Public Health England or the government's new obesity strategy.

Thursday

10 June 2021

Steerpike

Jeremy Corbyn: Luciana Berger was not hounded out of Labour

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 Frank Sinatra on regrets actually – I’ve got a few but too few to mention.' Sangfroid that will be of little comfort to the 46 MPs who lost their seats 18 months ago... Today it was Cambridge who played host to Corbyn for an hour.

Steerpike

Watch: Biden’s Carrie teasing

'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. He murmured 'I told the Prime Minister, "we have something in common".' A concerned look broke across Boris's face. What could it be? 'We both married way above our station'. https://twitter.com/BBCPolitics/status/1403000551105728512?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw Vigorous nodding, vague murmuring, the desperation not to say something contradictory.

Steerpike

Watch: Rees-Mogg mocks Oxford ‘pimply adolescents’

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 Old Etonian demonstrate he has lost none of his wit or wisdom when he came to the Commons today to field questions from backbenchers.

Steerpike

Watch: 2019 Tories queue up to condemn ‘leftie lawyers’

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 in the barracks failed to meet a minimum standard. Today MPs clashed over whether or not such accommodation was justified with Cooper claiming the Home Office was guilty of 'ignoring public health advice in the middle of a pandemic and putting public health at risk.' A trio of Tories led the counterattack on Labour.

Steerpike

Sage scientist claims social distancing should remain ‘forever’

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 'forever.' Professor Susan Michie is a member of the government’s Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies and has previously caught Steerpike's eye as a key pillar of the Communist party of Great Britain who once boasted the nickname 'Stalin's granny.' The former wife of key Corbyn adviser Andrew Murray, Michie has been omnipresent on the nation's television screens through out the pandemic, continually popping up on Newsnight to preach the virtues of lockdowns and Covid restrictions.

Wednesday

9 June 2021

Steerpike

Labour’s summer of hubristic books

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 Big: How to Fix our World . Mr S wonders whether actually winning an election could be the answer to any of these questions? Other Labour books out include the ironically titled The Dignity of Labour by Jon Cruddas and Jess Phillips’s Everything You Really Need to Know About Politics – a surprising title for a candidate who had to withdraw last year from the Labour leadership race after 18 days owing to a lack of support.

Steerpike

Revealed: what Boris and Carrie hang on their walls

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 what works currently hang off it? These days, Downing Street aides are rather hush hush about the interiors of the flat. But there are some clues. Mr S has obtained files from the government Art Collection which lay bare for the first time the tastes and preferences of the Prime Minister and his wife Carrie Johnson when it comes to the paintings that hang in the flat.

Tuesday

8 June 2021

Steerpike

Will beefy Botham hit the hacks for six?

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 honour of facing off against the best talent banded together from the Lords and the Commons as part of an all-star parliamentary XI. Ahead of the crunch tie, peers and MPs themselves took to the field in a warm up game against Marylebone cricket club as part of the dozen or so fixtures the side play a year.

Steerpike

Watch: Macron slapped in the face

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 his home turf. On a visit to the Drome region of south-eastern France – as part of his tour of France to take the ‘pulse of the country’ after the coronavirus crisis – Macron approached a group of people. When the President got within touching distance, one young man leaned forward and slapped him squarely in the face. Macron was then bundled away by security.

Steerpike

Dawn Butler becomes the first MP to join Cameo

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. Butler, a former Shadow Cabinet member who has sat for Brent South since 2015, is now flogging messages for any kind of occasion. Customers are promised a 24 hour delivery time from a 'serious MP with a serious sense of humour' with an accompanying winky face, with prices of £30 having previously been listed.

Monday

7 June 2021

Steerpike

Watch: Priti Patel schools Zarah Sultana

Tories up and down the country should be celebrating tonight after it was revealed that walking CCHQ advert Zarah Sultana has kept her seat intact in the report by the Boundary Commission. The hard left MP has served as a Conservative recruiting agent since 2019 when the 27-year-old squeaked home in Coventry South by just 401 votes – down from some 7,947 her Labour predecessor Jim Cunningham managed just two years earlier. And this afternoon Sultana gave us some indication as to why she hemorrhaged votes to such an extent at the last election. Popping up today at Home Office oral questions, Sultana asked Priti Patel about detention conditions for asylum seekers at Napier barracks.

Steerpike

Tech blunder adds to MPs’ results day nerves

It is results day in the House of Commons as nervy MPs wait to find out their future. At long last the Boundary Commission for England has today revealed its conclusions on the future of Westminster constituencies. It is the latest development in a decade-long saga which has previously failed to change the parliamentary map. This time though the expectation is it will go ahead, with new constituencies finalised in 2023. Those who see their constituency go will have to compete with a party colleague to stand in a neighbouring seat or move across the country to a safer seat as part of the infamous 'chicken run' tradition as Mims Davies did in 2019.

Steerpike

The foreign aid rebels: meet the new awkward squad

And so the foreign aid rebellion died before it even began. This afternoon Speaker Lindsay Hoyle decided that an audacious move to amend the ARIA bill to keep spending 0.7 per cent of GDP year on international development was not within the scope of the legislation.Despite this Mr S thought it worthwhile to go through the names of those Tories listed on the order paper to give you a cut out and keep guide to the new gang of government rebels. Most of those named will be familiar to long-suffering members of the Tory whips office: Sir Roger Gale was of course one of the first MPs to call for Dominic Cummings's resignation after Barnard Castle and it can hardly be a surprise to see him backing a measure that would gut the latter's cherished project.