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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Nicola Sturgeon had some choice words to say about Brexit last month. Speaking at one of Scotland’s daily coronavirus briefings, the First Minister said she was ‘deeply frustrated and depressed’ about the prospect of no deal in the new year, and suggested that to talk about Brexit in the middle of a pandemic was not
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Mr Steerpike was not exactly impressed when the government launched a new website feature this morning to tell people which tier they were going to be in – and which promptly crashed, leaving people in limbo. But if you were left disappointed by the tech blunder, that was nothing compared to the Speaker of the
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The government is set to announce today which areas will be moved into the three tiers, once the national lockdown ends on 2 December. To help the anxious public find out if they will be allowed to visit their friends and family, depending on their area, the government helpfully launched a new feature on its
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This year Jordan Peterson, the cult Canadian psychologist, meat-eater and lifestyle guru, will tentatively edge back into the public spotlight, after spending time reportedly recovering from drug addiction in Russia. Readers may be familiar with Peterson’s self-help guide 12 Rules for Life, which sold over three million copies worldwide and topped the bestseller lists. So
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The Tory MP and former 1922 committee chair Charles Walker appears to have become involved in a lockdown protest outside Parliament today. The MP was outside the House of Commons when he witnessed an elderly woman being arrested by police. In response, Walker told the officers that their arrest was an ‘outrage’ and was not
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After a brief spell in the Labour hinterland after losing her Durham seat in 2019, the former MP and Corbynite Laura Pidcock returned to frontline politics this year, after being elected to the party’s National Executive Committee (NEC). Unfortunately though it didn’t take long for the former Durham MP to once again indulge in the
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In case you missed the memo, it’s now illegal to cross the border to Scotland unless you have a ‘reasonable excuse’ that meets the First Minister’s requirements. Nicola Sturgeon’s new law – which limits the number of people who can travel from England to Scotland – is said to be aimed at protecting public health north
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Jeremy Corbyn is gone but at least we still have the memories. His son Tommy Corbyn shared one earlier from happier times, when Corbyn led the Labour party. Corbyn junior said watching his dad on stage at the festival was ‘one of the proudest moments of my life’: After Jeremy had finished speaking, he said, ‘one of
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Oh dear. You would think with the Prime Minister still isolating (after coming into contact with a Covid-infected MP) that the Downing Street boffins would have set him up with a decent enough internet connection by now. Unfortunately though, it appears that the PM is still struggling when it comes to the tech. Boris Johnson
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Boris Johnson has been forced into an embarrassing row today, after the government published a report into allegations that Home Secretary Priti Patel bullied her staff – and which found that she broke the ministerial code. Despite this, the Prime Minister declined to punish Patel, which then led his advisor on ministerial standards to stand
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Whenever Donald Trump tweets something these days, it doesn’t take long before Twitter moves in with a warning. ‘This claim about election fraud is disputed,’ is one of the latest hectoring messages to be slapped on the outgoing president’s tweets. Yesterday no fewer than nine of Trump’s tweets were accompanied by similar links added by moderators. It’s
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Oh dear. Readers may remember that back in March the Brexit talks between Britain and the EU were briefly derailed, after the EU chief negotiator Michel Barnier tested positive for coronavirus. Shortly afterwards, the UK negotiator David Frost also began to develop symptoms and was forced into isolation. You would have hoped after the incident,
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Jeremy Corbyn’s fan club has reacted with predictable outrage to the decision not to hand him back the party whip. Starmer’s refusal to do so was not ‘the right thing to do,’ said Labour MP Clive Lewis. ‘At a time of national crisis, division in the Labour party serves nobody but the Tory Government,’ said Richard Burgon. But Mr S wonders
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Fresh from sparking protests around the world with his comments on Islam, Emmanuel Macron now has a new adversary to add to the list: the New York Times. ‘The president has some bones to pick with the American media,’ read a piece by the NYT‘s media editor Ben Smith, published this week. ‘So president Emmanuel Macron
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Since Dominic Cummings was last week given his marching orders, after allegedly calling Carrie Symonds ‘princess Nut Nut’, are members of Tory high command finding more subtle ways to make digs at the Prime Minister and his fiancée? Yesterday, Cummings’s ally Robert Halfon – chairman of the Education select committee – gave the Sun a quote,
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Test and trace boss Dido Harding has been ordered to self-isolate by her own app. The Baroness joins a handful of Tory MPs — not to mention the Prime Minister Boris Johnson — who have been ‘pinged’ by contact tracers. Sharp-eyed readers will notice that Harding has been told she only has to isolate for nine
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At the end of October Jeremy Corbyn was suspended from the party he loved and led, after suggesting that concerns about Labour’s anti-Semitism problem during his tenure had been ‘dramatically overstated’ for political reasons. At the time of his suspension, the former Labour leader seemed to strike a defiant tone. In a broadcast interview, Corbyn
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While most people welcomed the news last week that Pfizer had developed a vaccine that was over 90 per cent effective, others saw it as a very personal vindication. In particular, allies of the head of the UK’s vaccine taskforce, Kate Bingham, suggested that her decision to buy 40 million doses for the UK was
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The £12 billion splurge of taxpayer cash into a test-and-trace system meant that due process was suspended. Cash was spent without question, shortcuts were taken, and basic questions were dodged. For example: was contact tracing ever going to stop a virus which, as we knew as early as March, left no symptoms in many of
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There may be a pandemic on but that’s not going to stop Downing Street staff briefing against one another. Tensions came to a head this week after Boris Johnson’s director of communications, Lee Cain, announced his resignation. The row began after it was reported in the Times and Daily Mail that Cain – a former Vote
