Steerpike

Steerpike

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

Thursday

Steerpike

Licence to fill: MI6 brings in headhunters to hire new Q

From our UK edition

MI6 is on the hunt for a new Q and in the spirit of 21st century recruitment, Britain's secret service has turned to the one truly indestructible force of modern life: corporate headhunters. Consultants Saxton Bampfylde – dubbed the Fortnum and Mason of labour exchanges – have been brought in to lead the search for Director General Q, one of the deputies to the Chief of MI6 Richard Moore known as 'C.'  Moore told Times Radio on Sunday the new role is inspired by the gadget specialist portrayed in the James Bond films, famously played by Desmond Llewelyn: In this one life imitates art.

Steerpike

Three in four do not know their police and crime commissioner

From our UK edition

It is one week to go until the biggest set of polls outside of a general election in UK history, prompting some commentators to bill next Thursday 'the British midterms'. Wales and Scotland both vote for their devolved parliaments alongside 13 directly elected mayoralties including Tees Valley, West Midlands and of course London with its assembly. Around 5,000 council seats will be fought across the country alongside the hard fought Hartlepool by-election.  But while next Thursday looks set to be a psephologist's dream, one set of elections has attracted little attention or enthusiasm: the 39 Police and Crime commissioner contests in England and Wales, delayed a year due to Covid.

Wednesday

Steerpike

Watch: French MP factchecked on UK jabs record

From our UK edition

France's vaccine rollout has had its difficulties in recent months. In early January, the Mail on Sunday reported the 'French are at better at torching cars than giving Covid vaccinations' after vandals burned 861 vehicles on New Year's Eve – more than twice the number of people inoculated over the last five days of December. Subsequent efforts to address rampant vaccine hesitancy were not hindered by President Emmanuel Macron, who claimed the AstraZeneca vaccine was merely 'quasi ineffective' with one poll showing just 20 per cent of French voters had confidence in the jab in March. Now though efforts have at last stepped up, with the country reaching a target of 10 million first doses a week ahead of its mid-April target.

Steerpike

Cameroons clash over Downing Street ‘skip’

From our UK edition

As Flatgate rumbles on, it appears the government has adopted a new communications approach to a controversy involving the Prime Minister's spouse: send for Michael Gove's wife. The Daily Mail columnist Sarah Vine popped up on Radio 4's Today programme this morning to firefight the situation – an interesting choice given her love of incendiary quotes in her weekly columns. Presenter Nick Robinson asked Vine what she made of the row over whether £58,000 of Tory party money was spent on renovating part of No. 10 to which the latter responded with gusto: The thing about the whole No 10. refurbishment thing is that the Prime Minister can't be expected to live in a skip.

Steerpike

A politician’s guide to non-denial denials

From our UK edition

Michael Gove was deployed to the Commons on Monday afternoon to answers questions on the ministerial code, an hour-long appearance in which he was (inevitably) asked about that day’s Daily Mail splash: ‘Boris: Let the bodies pile high in their thousands'. An awkward question for any minister to handle, you might think, but the oleaginous Gove just about got away with it. Asked directly about the reports, the Cabinet Office minister gave a lengthy reply which contained this key passage to wriggle out of trouble again: Tens of thousands of people were dying. The Prime Minister made a decision in that meeting to trigger a second lockdown. He made a subsequent decision to trigger a third lockdown. This is a Prime Minister who was in hospital himself, in intensive care.

Tuesday

Steerpike

Exclusive: Murdoch pulls News UK television channel

From our UK edition

Plans for a News UK channel to rival the BBC appear to be dead in the water.  Last year it was reported that Rupert Murdoch was planning to expand his news empire by launching a new channel in the UK that would take inspiration from Fox News in the US.  Alas it's not to be. The company's Chief Executive Rebekah Brooks has today emailed all staff to announce that broadcast executive David Rhodes is leaving the company at the end of June. It follows reports in February that News UK planned to focus on streaming, with Brooks telling staff that News UK had concluded it was not 'commercially viable' to launch a linear news channel. Instead the company is looking at on demand products. Over to GB News then..

Steerpike

Labour’s tax attack in Hartlepool backfires

From our UK edition

Pity the poor people of Hartlepool. Next week's parliamentary by election has seen an army of activists pouring in to the Red Wall seat, with Labour desperate to cling on to a seat that last went blue in the days of Supermac. CCHQ have been playing down chances of a Tory gain but one Labour insider has told Steerpike their party's internal polling is 'dire' – a situation not helped by 'MILF-gate' or a farrago over St George's cross flags. Now though Labour are embroiled in another taxing row after deputy leader Angela Rayner launched an attack on the Conservative Hartlepool candidate, Jill Mortimer.

Monday

Steerpike

Watch: brazen Tory claims government is ‘almost painfully transparent’

From our UK edition

The SNP tabled an urgent question in Westminster today, asking for an update on the ministerial code in light of recent allegations of impropriety – something of course their comrades in Holyrood would know all about. A potentially tricky outing for the government beckoned but up stepped Michael Gove, master of the sticky wicket, to bat away the opposition spinmeisters and dig his hapless captain out of trouble again. Fortunately for Gove some Tory MPs were on hand to provide softball 'questions' that were more of gentle underhand throw than a fiendish googly. A case in point was 2019-er Andrew Griffith, who lent his £9.5 million townhouse to Boris Johnson's campaign during the latter's successful leadership bid.

Steerpike

Wanted: head of Labour party fundraising

From our UK edition

Whether it's in government or outside it, financial management has often been Labour's weak spot. In recent years though the party has struggled to balance its own budgets, let alone those of the country, with fundraising from wealthy donors being (understandably) more difficult during Jeremy Corbyn's leadership.  Electoral Commission figures published last week show that in 2019 the Lib Dems managed to outspend Labour by more than £2.3 million during that year's general and European elections even with the might of the trade unions backing Jezza. Despite a change of leader, problems still remain with reports last summer that the party risked facing bankruptcy over the legal bill for antisemitism cases and the leaked internal dossier on the handling of this issue.

Steerpike

Parliament’s £82k bill to harass Betty Boothroyd

From our UK edition

In the wake of recent scandals, Parliament last year began a series of 'Valuing Everyone' training sessions to 'combat bullying, harassment and sexual misconduct.' In November they were made compulsory but last week it emerged that the Lords standards commissioner has launched investigations into around 60 members who are yet to take the training including none other than the much loved nonagenarian Betty Boothroyd, the former Commons speaker. The news has sparked an outcry as Boothroyd is recovering from recent open heart surgery and at the grand age of 91 is an unlikely candidate for the next 'Pestminster' scandal. Broadcaster Timandra Harkness tweeted wryly that: 'Surely, as an ex-Tiller Girl and veteran politician, she should be TEACHING that course?

Sunday

Steerpike

David Ward plots another comeback

From our UK edition

Much has changed in the world of politics since May 2015 but one thing certainly hasn't – former MP David Ward is still causing problems for the Liberal Democrats. The one term wonder achieved little in his year five stint in Parliament other than notoriety for a 2013 website post to mark Holocaust Memorial Day in which claimed he was 'saddened that the Jews, who suffered unbelievable levels of persecution during the Holocaust, could within a few years of liberation from the death camps, be inflicting atrocities on Palestinians in the new State of Israel and continue to do so on a daily basis in the West Bank and Gaza'. He was subsequently temporarily suspended from the parliamentary party five months later for questioning Israel's right to exist.

Saturday

Steerpike

Watch: Scottish Labour leader crashes dance class

From our UK edition

The Holyrood election has been characterised as relentlessly negative, with the SNP and the Conservatives sticking rigidly to their respective attacks on the Prime Minister and calls for a second referendum on independence. Both Nicola Sturgeon and Tory leader Douglas Ross look like they desperately want the whole thing to be over. Not so, Anas Sarwar. The Scottish Labour leader appears to be living his best life with an energetic campaign emphasising his opposition both to indyref2 and banging on about opposition to indyref2. This has led to him being accused by Sturgeon of sitting on the fence.  https://twitter.com/GordonMcKee_/status/1385935122038415360?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw Sarwar can be seen gyrating enthusiastically to 'Uptown Funk' by Mark Ronson and Bruno Mars.

Steerpike

Sir Alistair Graham’s rentaquote renaissance

From our UK edition

Few in Westminster have emerged with any credit from the fallout of the Greensill saga. A pandora’s box has now been opened with the lobbying activities of politicians both past and present now considered fair game. But one man who is clearly enjoying himself is the ubiquitous Sir Alastair Graham, the former chairman of the Committee on Standards in Public Life. Graham left his post in 2007 but 14 years on is still very much the go to man for lobby hacks in need of a quote. Always ready to express shock and anger at the latest misdoings of those awful politicians, the onetime trade unionist has had a career littered with committeeships so beloved of establishment panjandrums. https://twitter.com/IainDale/status/1383718559562420228?

Friday

Steerpike

The top three Dominic Cummings bombshells

From our UK edition

Three national newspapers last night splashed on No. 10 source claims that Dominic Cummings was responsible for WhatsApp leaks about Boris Johnson's government. Less than 24 hours later the former chief adviser has opted to return fire, unleashing a 1,091 blog post in vintage Cummings style.  It begins in typically combative style – 'the Prime Minister’s new director of communications Jack Doyle, at the PM’s request, has made a number of false accusations to the media' – going on to rebut reported claims in recent months.

Steerpike

Merkel’s vaccine nationalism threatens India

From our UK edition

You might have thought that Europe's leaders would be wary of handing Brussels greater powers, given the various mishaps of the EU's vaccine procurement and roll out scheme since January. But for German Chancellor Angela Merkel the sorry episode has served less a chastening warning about the dangers of Euro integration than a justification for a more centralised state. Speaking earlier this week in a video conversation with European People's party group leader Manfred Weber, Merkel aligned herself with European Commission president Ursula von der Leyen whose handling of the pandemic has been widely criticised.

Steerpike

Watch: SNP candidate claims English border would ‘create jobs’

From our UK edition

The calibre of SNP representatives in recent years has provided Mr S with a rich seam of stories and memorable lines. Nearly one fifth of the party's Westminster contingent has been sacked, quit, put under investigation or suspended during the last 18 months while in Holyrood there has been the ongoing Salmond/Sturgeon saga and the spectre of sleaze in Derek Mackay and Mark McDonald. Few though have been as eminently quotable as the incumbent member for the South Scotland region, Emma Harper. In 2019 she appeared on the BBC Scotland show Debate Night and made a series of bizarre claims when asked about whether an independent Scotland would keep the British pound.

Thursday

Steerpike

Pollster consistently overstated Scottish independence support

Few events are as eagerly anticipated in Scotland as the release of a bombshell new poll. Unionists and nationalists eagerly refresh their Twitter feeds at the anointed hour, awaiting to praise or castigate the company in question for its latest figures on the all important question of independence. For both sides know the figures will be seized on by the media as 'proof' that their side is winning, their cause is just and their campaign's triumph inevitable. One poll that made more headlines than most was a Savanta ComRes survey in December which found that support for a 'Yes' vote to Scotland leaving the Union was polling at 52 per cent compared to 'No' on 48 per cent.

Steerpike

Just one in five have heard of COP26

From our UK edition

The axing of televised lobby briefings on Tuesday has meant a new role for Boris Johnson's press secretary Allegra Stratton. Now recast as the government's spokeswoman for the forthcoming COP26 summit in Glasgow, it will be her job to front communications both strategically and publicly in the lead up to the event in November. The climate change eco-jamboree is seen as Johnson's moment on the world stage, with insiders suggesting it will be 'bigger than the Olympics' replete even with its own mascot. But new figures seen by Steerpike suggests Stratton will have her work cut out in efforts to enthuse the public.

Wednesday

Steerpike

Johnny Mercer savages No. 10

From our UK edition

When Boris Johnson announced he was running to be Tory leader in July 2019, few were more vociferous in their support than Johnny Mercer. The former Royal Artillery captain claimed at the time that 'Boris is the man of the moment' and 'a much deeper thinker than people assess him to be', being rewarded with a post as a junior defence minister. Fast forward nearly two years and Mercer has now left his post over the treatment of veterans who served in Northern Ireland after they were excluded from the amnesty in the Overseas Operations Bill. In a Times Radio interview this afternoon, Mercer let rip his frustrations, claiming that his spell in Whitehall was 'the most distrustful, awful environment I've ever worked in' – quite a statement from a Helmand veteran.

Steerpike

Labour’s trio of lobbying Lords

From our UK edition

Labour has been making much of the issue of lobbying since the Greensill scandal broke last month, with Rachel Reeves calling for a ‘proper’ investigation ‘to rein in the lobbyists and lift standards in this great democracy.’ But attention has now turned to the opposition’s own frontbenchers– particularly in the House of Lords where both Charlie Falconer and Sue Hayman have been revealed as having ties to lobbying firms. Falconer is a partner at US law company Gibson Dunn which offers ‘political lobbying’ advice in the UK while Hayman is a board member of London outfit Grayling.