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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PA Media are now reporting that the Duchess of Sussex did formally complain to ITV over Piers Morgan’s comments on GMB amid concerns that his comments may affect others attempting to deal with their mental health problems. The Good Morning Britain co-host quit last night, with a spokesman for ITV subsequently refusing to deny that the pregnant royal had
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Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab has blasted claims by a senior Eurocrat that the UK is hampering the bloc’s vaccine rollout, calling the questionable assertions ‘completely false’. Charles Michel, president of the European Council, initially argued that Britain had imposed an ‘outright ban on the export of vaccines or vaccine components’ leaving the country in an EU blog
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World Book Day was last Thursday and now a leading German publisher has belatedly marked the occasion by pulping copies of a children’s picture book. Its crime? Saying something that is almost certainly true: that Covid-19 originated in China. ‘A Corona Rainbow for Anna and Moritz’ was published to help kids understand the impact that Covid-19
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Oh dear. Things got rather heated in the GMB studio this morning when discussing Harry and Meghan’s bombshell Oprah interview, which aired in the UK last night. On the show, presenter Alex Beresford laid into Piers Morgan for his treatment of Meghan, and suggested that his behaviour had been ‘absolutely diabolical’. This appeared to get
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Oh dear. Not content with having claimed that baby Archie was denied his rightful title, last night’s interview with the Sussexes saw them boast of having conducted a secret marriage with the Archbishop of Canterbury three days before the public ceremony in May 2018. Meghan told Oprah: ‘You know, three days before our wedding, we
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He may be leaving the political stage but new figures show Nigel Farage won’t be short of a bob or two. Just hours after announcing his retirement from frontline politics on Saturday night, the former Brexit party leader said he was joining fan video app Cameo — where viewers pay celebrities to record personalised video messages.
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What does No. 10 think about Harry and Meghan’s Palace intrigue? Perhaps we can glean some insight from the comments of environment minister and close friend of Boris and Carrie. Zac (now Lord) Goldsmith is the first minister to publicly criticise the spurned royal couple, tweeting that ‘Harry is blowing up his family’. The Duchess of Sussex also comes in
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Viewers watching Harry and Meghan’s interview with Oprah last night were treated to a host of bombshells on everything from the couple’s secret marriage to the gender of their new baby. Allegations levelled by the pair include claims that a member of the royal family made racist comments about Archie’s skin colour and that the
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The Royal Family is waking up to a series of allegations set to rock the monarchy following Prince Harry and Meghan Markle’s tell-all interview with Oprah. The two-hour show aired in the United States overnight – and will appear on ITV this evening. But with the main lines set to dominate the news agenda all
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It’s pretty hard to dispute that the EU’s vaccine procurement scheme has been nothing short of a shambles this year, with the bloc failing to strike deals quickly enough with pharmaceutical companies, leading to dosage shortages for member states. The disaster has led to even the Continent’s most ardent Europhiles, from Guy Verhofstadt to the
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Rishi Sunak’s Budget has been greeted fairly favourably. The Chancellor has succeeded in avoiding sparking uproar on the Tory backbenches. And Labour’s response was muted. But not everyone is happy. Step forward Caroline Lucas. The Green party MP, beamed in to the Commons from Brighton (where else?), found a fatal flaw in Sunak’s announcement: ‘I
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Gorgeous George, the born-again Unionist north of the border, has had a revelation. In order to knock the SNP down a peg at the May elections, the Caledonian firebrand is going to have to do something that goes against every fibre of his socialist being. George Galloway is voting Tory. Once he was teaming up with Jeremy
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After the government published emails showing it continued a doomed legal fight with Alex Salmond despite warnings from their own lawyers that they would likely lose, Nicola Sturgeon is facing calls to resign. While the Scottish Conservatives are calling for a no-confidence vote in the First Minister, an SNP spokesperson has hit back – saying
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Today – after the deputy First Minister John Swinney was threatened with a no-confidence vote in the Scottish Parliament – the SNP finally agreed to release its legal advice from Alex Salmond’s challenge against the government. Mr S can see why Nicola Sturgeon wanted to keep the advice hidden… The documents concern Salmond’s successful legal challenge
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It seems it’s a costly business putting together a historical report. In fact, it took two researchers and a grand total of £18,481 to compile Historic England’s slavery audit. The document — which lists any English pub, church or village hall that might have some connection to the transatlantic slave trade — reportedly caused much frustration among ministers for
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After a year of intermittent lockdowns, many Britons have spent too long looking at the walls of their flat and have started to consider an interior upgrade. So, who can blame the Prime Minister’s fiancé Carrie Symonds for thinking similar? The Daily Mail reports that Symonds has recently completed an extensive makeover of the Downing
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The New York Times seems to have developed a strange view of Britain in recent years – or at least since the Brexit vote in 2016. In the NYT’s world, the UK is a desolate place, where locals huddle round bin fires on the streets of London, gnawing on legs of mutton and cavorting in
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It’s not the crime, it’s the cover-up: just as Watergate exposed the workings of the Nixon White House the Salmond inquiry is giving the world a glimpse of how the SNP works in Edinburgh. And how the SNP-led committee investigating Nicola Sturgeon is shameless in its determination to rig the system. First, the committee tried not to
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The eyes of the world have been on Britain’s vaccination programme in recent months, as the UK government embarked on a dramatic push to get our population inoculated by prioritising first doses. During this time, the naysayers have been plentiful – with some UK commentators and plenty of politicians abroad keen to cast doubt over
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For most of the past year, Alex Salmond has been engaged in a vicious and high-profile war against his successor, Nicola Sturgeon, with Salmond suggesting that the Scottish establishment has conspired against him to keep him out of public life and have him jailed. Now it appears that Salmond has been waging war against a
