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

Wednesday

Steerpike

Rahman gets the gang back together

From our UK edition

Earlier this month Steerpike revealed that Lutfur Rahman has returned to the frontline of Tower Hamlets politics, six years after becoming the first directly elected British mayor to be removed for electoral fraud. Now it appears another old face has re-emerged to join Rahman in his bid to save the Tower Hamlets mayoralty, ahead of a rumoured run for the position next year. An image of Baroness Uddin is splashed on a new ‘Yes for Mayor: Power to the People’ leaflet currently being circulated in Tower Hamlets, extolling the virtues of the current council system which could be abolished in May’s referendum.

Steerpike

Merkel and Macron’s Sputnik U-turn

From our UK edition

The last three months have seen a litany of humiliations for Brussels as its leaders try to procure and roll out much needed vaccines across the continent. Whether it's been Ursula von der Leyen almost erecting a hard border in Ireland or Handelsblatt being briefed misinformation from a misread excel table, impounded meningitis jabs in Italy or doctors forced to destroy unwanted vaccines in Germany, every week seems to bring fresh ignominy and embarrassment. But now a new low appears to have been reached with today's news that France and Germany are in negotiations to buy Russia's Sputnik V vaccine from their implacable opponent Vladimir Putin.

Tuesday

Steerpike

Boris’s Barnard Castle quip backfires

From our UK edition

This afternoon the Prime Minister chaired the second meeting with business bigwigs on his 'Build Back Better' council, whose membership includes John Lewis supremo Sharon White, Heathrow chief Lord Deighton and Charlotte Hogg of Visa. The dry-as-dust press release to mark the occasion is replete with the usual jejune platitudes beloved of Whitehall mandarins for the government's 'Plan for Growth' and forthcoming 'Innovation Strategy.' What the dispatch did not mention however was a typically Johnsonian jibe at the expense of his former chief adviser.

Steerpike

Will Lindsay get his chariot back?

From our UK edition

As Speaker, John Bercow could never be accused of underselling his position. During his tenure the diminutive parliamentarian attracted criticism for everything from his £37,000 portrait and coat of arms to his £45,000 apartment refurbishment to a £1,000 taxi journey. But one free ride Bercow did decline was the official Speaker’s State Coach, a gilded 17th century carriage traditionally used for coronations.

Steerpike

Is Macron the new Trump?

From our UK edition

For the last three months journalists across the world have been missing the curious mix of bombast, arrogance, untruths and showmanship that was President Donald Trump. But is a new unlikely figure now filling that void? As an embattled, insecure incumbent staring down the barrel of defeat in an upcoming presidential contest dominated by Covid, Emmanuel Macron must be hoping his fate doesn't play out like the Donald's. But as France's third wave of Covid gets underway, the country's president appears to be taking tips from his one time counterpart on pandemic leadership. The French newspaper Le Monde today reports a series of fawning quotes from Macron's aides who now call him 'the president epidemologist.

Steerpike

Northern Independence leader fails to whippet into shape

From our UK edition

After the melodrama of Milf-gate and the shenanigans of Richard Tice, Mr S was not sure how much farce was left in the Hartlepool by-election. Thankfully, a whole new comedy of errors has now arrived in the form of the recently launched Northern Independence party. In its bid to break the mould of British politics, the party has (naturally) turned to a failed former Labour MP Thelma Walker, a one-time wonder who lost her Colne Valley seat in 2019. A natural choice for Hartlepool then, a mere 90 miles away. The new party was founded in October by Philip Proudfoot, an international development studies lecturer at Sussex University with the goal of making the North of England an independent state under the name Northumbria, with borders based on the historic region.

Steerpike

Europe’s jab jibes at UK rollout

From our UK edition

The last ten weeks have been a depressing time for those few believers in the EU's lofty ideals. The saga of the vaccine procurement and roll out would be funny if it was not so tragic, beginning with Ursula von der Leyen trying to erect a hard border in Ireland in January and now culminating in Italy impounding meningitis jabs to America. You would have hoped such incompetence would have made some in Brussels reflect on their hubris. Not a bit of it, judging by the briefing of an anonymous EU official last weekend.

Monday

Steerpike

Boris puts Barnard Castle back on the map

From our UK edition

All eyes were on Downing Street’s spanking new £2.6 million media suite, unveiled for the first time at this afternoon’s press conference. Speaking in front of a sea of blue backdrop, Boris Johnson was flanked by a brace of Union Jacks and his covid lieutenants Professor Whitty and Sir Patrick Vallance. Johnson revealed that a deal has been agreed to support the manufacturing of up to 60 million doses of the Novavax coronavirus vaccine in the UK. Big pharma behemoth GlaxoSmithKline will provide ‘fill and finish’ manufacturing capacity from the beginning of May – the completion stage of vaccine manufacturing, preparing vials of the final vaccine and packaging them for distribution and use. And where will such capacity be based?

Steerpike

The Sun sets on toxic masculinity

From our UK edition

The Sun newspaper has been on an interesting journey in recent years, ditching its page three girls, drawing up a diversity style guide and launching its ‘Green Team: Road to COP26’ coverage replete with eco badges for staff. Last week, the once freedom loving Sun even declared itself comfortable with the idea of vaccine passports in pubs. Now the paper has toxic masculinity in its sights. Hacks across the Murdoch titles in London Bridge have been invited to a News UK debate tomorrow ‘how we unpick the toxicity of sexually aggressive male behaviour and redefine masculinity to support women’s rights and freedoms.

Steerpike

Cambridge comes unstuck on Winnie the Pooh

From our UK edition

Oh dear. Over the weekend, Cambridge University's Twitter account celebrated the graduation of its most recent cohort with some pearls of wisdom that it attributed to one of its former students – AA Milne, the creator of Winnie Pooh. Milne graduated from Trinity College Cambridge with a B.A. in Mathematics at the beginning of the twentieth century and it was to him that the social media staff turned for inspiration, writing in a now deleted tweet: 'Congratulations to everyone graduating from #Cambridge in absence today! Promise me you'll always remember: You're braver than you believe, and stronger than you seem, and smarter than you think." – AA Milne (Trinity, 1900) A nice sentiment but unfortunately not quite accurate.

Steerpike

Liz Truss and the war on woke

From our UK edition

Earlier this month the usual suspects were out in force for Liz Truss after it was revealed the International Trade Secretary would not be attending Boris Johnson’s summit on violence against women. As the Minister for Women and Equalities, Truss has won plaudits from the right of the party for taking on what she calls the ‘woke brigade’. She now ranks top of the Conservative Home rankings of the Tory faithful – a position she has held since December. This has been helped in no small part by her speech to the Centre for Policy Studies in which she skewered ‘the equality debate’ as being ‘dominated by a small number of unrepresentative voices and by those who believe people are defined by their protected characteristic.

Friday

Steerpike

Scottish Covid adviser’s vaccine confusion

From our UK edition

Oh dear. During the course of the pandemic, the University of Edinburgh professor of public health Devi Sridhar, has become a regular sight on television screens and comment pages – offering her insights on the best course of action over Covid. In her role on the Scottish government’s Covid-19 advisory group, Sridhar has previously caught Mr Steerpike's attention for lobbying repeatedly for more SNP powers which she claims are necessary to stop the spread of coronavirus. The snag? There was nothing stopping the Scottish government from quarantining travellers using their own powers, a move that was already planned at the point Sridhar demanded it.

Steerpike

France accuses Britain of vaccine ‘blackmail’

From our UK edition

In some ways you have to admire the sheer shamelessness of the French government. To spend the start of the year slagging off the AstraZeneca vaccine before threatening the seize those very same jabs showed a degree of brazenness that excelled even the usual French standards. But to accuse the UK of blackmailing Paris and her European neighbours must be the peak of Gallic gall.  The French foreign minister Jean-Yves Le Drian spoke to a radio show this week in which he criticised the UK's vaccine programme. He told listeners: 'You can't be playing like this, a bit of blackmail, just because [the UK] hurried to get people vaccinated with a first shot.' He then denounced the British government's plan to ensure that it...

Steerpike

Nat another one: Salmond’s disastrous party launch

From our UK edition

The latest episode in Scotland's longest-running soap opera was broadcast today as former first minister Alex Salmond took to YouTube to announce the launch of his new pro-independence party Alba. The new party, Salmond announced, would only contest list seats under Scotland's additional member system, because, as he argued, the SNP is set to win the most constituencies and the more constituency seats you win, the harder it is to win them on the list. This, Salmond claimed, would help create a 'supermajority' for independence. Unfortunately that was the only thing that could be said to be 'super' about the launch.

Steerpike

Prince Albert’s royal reprimand to the Sussexes

From our UK edition

Oh dear. While the various bombshells Harry and Meghan rained down on the House of Windsor in their Oprah Winfrey interview have thus far been met by near silence by British royals, apparently one distant overseas relative did not get the memo.Prince Albert II of Monaco – the seventh cousin twice removed of Queen Elizabeth II – appeared on BBC News yesterday where he was asked about the decision of the Sussexes to do a tell all interview with Oprah Winfrey. Appropriate enough perhaps given that Albert is himself the son of both literal and Hollywood royalty, being the product of the marriage between Grace Kelly and Prince Rainier III. Albert said: It’s very difficult to be in someone’s place. I can understand the pressures that they were under.

Steerpike

Watch: Adonis grilled on UK vaccine scheme

From our UK edition

As President of the European Movement during the current Brussels vaccine crisis, Andrew Adonis currently has his work cut out. With polls currently showing that Brits now have a more positive attitude towards the UK’s future outside the EU than negative by a margin of two to one, any bid to get the UK to rejoin the EU will suffer for as long as the trade bloc's jab woes continue. Still, Adonis could make it easier for himself and get round to deleting some of his old tweets on the UK's own vaccine efforts. Appearing last night on Spectator TV the peer was asked by Andrew Neil why he'd tweeted in November that the British vaccine rollout would 'lead to billions of corrupt contracts' and the supply and distribution would be a 'fiasco.'  https://twitter.

Steerpike

Poll shows Brits rock solid on Gibraltar MP

From our UK edition

Gibraltar has intermittently featured in the headlines in recent years amid repeated incursions by Spanish ships into the peninsula’s waters. The future of the Rock – which voted by 96 per cent to stay in the EU in 2016 – was subject to much speculation and briefing during the Brexit negotiations as Spain has long sought to reclaim the tiny territory. But could an even closer relationship with Westminster now be on the cards? A new poll for The Spectator by Redfield and Wilton — with a sample size of 1,500 — shows that the British people back Gibraltar having its own seat in the House of Commons by more than three to one.

Thursday

Steerpike

Defra keeps it in the family

From our UK edition

Who is in charge at Defra? Technically, it's the environment secretary George Eustice. But in recent weeks there have been whisperings of the growing influence of the Goldsmith clan. Zac Goldsmith is a minister in the department as well as a close friend of both Boris Johnson and his fiancé Carrie Symonds. Just this weekend, a No. 10 source came out to deny claims from the farming lobby that Symonds and Goldsmith had teamed up in a bid to tie up farmers in red tape to protect the environment.

Steerpike

Watch: Charles Walker’s ‘pint of milk’ lockdown speech

From our UK edition

Sir Charles Walker has earned himself the reputation of being one of the most consistent and outspoken critics of the government's lockdown policy. The 1922 Committee stalwart has previously gone viral for passionate clips lambasting Matt Hancock's 10 year imprisonment plan for returning holidaymakers dodging quarantine rules, attacking Boris Johnson for treating MPs like 'dogs' and describing lockdown as 'studied and deliberate cruelty for a nation under pressure.'  Today Walker's ire was directed at what he considers to be Britain's slide into authoritarianism, promising in a four minute speech to carry a pint of milk around London in the next few days as a silent protest: 'That pint will remind me that the act of protest is a freedom and not a right.

Steerpike

Watch: Simon McCoy’s greatest BBC hits

From our UK edition

BBC's grumpiest news presenter Simon McCoy today announced he's leaving the corporation, the latest big name hire poached by start up channel GB News. McCoy, 59, leaves after 17 years at the Beeb, signing off this afternoon's News at One with the words: 'From me, it's good afternoon – and goodbye.' Mr S thought it only right to gather a round up of highlights from McCoy's recent career, presenting to you below six of the best and starting with how he greeted Boris Johnson's Talk Radio interview in July 2019 during the Tory leadership race: https://twitter.com/scottygb/status/1375016454031077379?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw It came weeks after he was forced to read off an autocue for a segment about a dog-show in Scotland: https://twitter.