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

Friday

Steerpike

Watch: Adonis grilled on UK vaccine scheme

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

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

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

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

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.

Steerpike

Watch: Michael Gove’s pub passport evasion

Michael Gove was up this morning in the Commons fielding questions following last night's controversial announcement that vaccine passports could be required for the pub. Amid collective fury at such a prospect by journalists, parliamentarians and policy wonks alike,  William Wragg, the baby faced assassin of moderate Toryism, stepped up to ask the obvious question: Does my right honourable friend, the chancellor of the duchy of lancaster, still agree with himself in his opposition to covid vaccine certification to attend the pub as he expressed on Sky News recently?

Steerpike

Is Boris Johnson a feminist?

It is the question on everyone's lips: is Boris Johnson a feminist? The Prime Minister's press secretary claimed a fortnight ago that he is; to the Guardian and the usual suspects he is a 'priapic sexist' guilty of the worst sorts of On the Buses smut – including in the Spectator's own august pages.  But now given Johnson's support in November for a gender balanced parliament and his noticeably restrained comments last week about the policing of the Clapham Common vigil, Mr S wonders if absolute power has changed Boris, well, absolutely?  Who better to answer this question than Caroline Nokes, elected unopposed last year as chair of the women and equalities committee in the Commons.

Steerpike

New poll gives Brexit a shot in the arm

On New Years’ Eve former Labour minister Andrew Adonis grandly declared on Twitter: ‘The campaign for Britain to rejoin Europe starts at midnight.’ Since then it’s not exactly been going swimmingly. The last nine weeks have seen a stark contrast between vaccine procurement and rollout in Brussels and in Britain, replete with swipes at the Oxford jab, sneers at the UK’s vaccine nationalism and even the spectre an Irish hard border in January. Adonis will join other Remainer panjandrums like Michael Heseltine and Caroline Lucas this weekend to discuss precisely these issues at the European Movement conference, whose programme incidentally makes no mention of the word ‘vaccine.

Wednesday

Steerpike

Watch: Boris’s Brexit music gaffe

Boris Johnson appeared before the Liaison Committee this afternoon to face a smorgasbord of select committee chairs on everything from pubs to passports. After culture chief Julian Knight grilled Johnson on the continued problems facing British musicians touring Europe, Liaison chair Bernard Jenkin took his chance to nimbly interject. Westminster's answer to the 'capo dei capi' took the chance to pose a question of his own: would the PM would join him on a Zoom call to hear performers' vociferous concerns for the purpose of 'listening and gathering intelligence'?

Steerpike

Will MPs back compensation for gay veterans?

Campaigners for LGBT+ rights have recently been most occupied with proposals to ban gay conversion therapy and the rights and wrongs of such a move. But could another battle soon be underway on an appropriately military subject? The Armed Forces had a ban on homosexuality until 2000 when the Blair government lifted it following a ruling in the European Courts of Human Rights. Veterans dismissed or forced to resign for their sexual orientation or gender identity before this date often suffered loss of ranks or pension. Some were given criminal convictions or placed on the Sex Offenders register, affecting them to this day.

Steerpike

Prince Harry gets his second job in 24 hours

President Biden's stimulus splurge is clearly working wonders, given the new found desire of American companies to stuff dollars into Prince Harry's pockets. Following the news yesterday that the exiled royal would be joining billion dollar tech start up BetterUp, America's answer to George Osborne has now bagged himself a second gig alongside existing million dollar content deals with Netflix and Spotify. The new role will be at international nonprofit the Aspen Institute, where he will serve on the Orwell-esque 'Commission on Information Disorder'. Prince Harry – or should we call him Commissioner Harry – will join 14 others and three co-chairs to hold a six-month study on how inaccurate information spreads across the country.

Steerpike

Is Reddit censoring The Spectator?

What's going on over at Reddit? The popular chatroom, which bills itself as 'the front page of the internet', has been accused of blocking Spectator articles. Earlier this week, the most popular UK politics page was suspended from public view and users who posted a link to a Spectator article were blocked. The article in question mentions one Aimee Challenor, a former ‘rising star’ of the Green party and transgender activist, who left the party in disgrace after she appointed her father — a violent paedophile — as her election agent. According to the moderators on the Reddit group r/UKPolitics, Aimee has since been hired by the tech firm, which is now zealously blocking content about her.

Steerpike

Revealed: the cost of Sadiq Khan’s woke army

‘Go woke, go broke’ has been a constant jibe at trendy businesses and progressive media outlets in recent years. But now the same refrain can be directed at Sadiq Khan and his Greater London Authority as it tries to plug a £500 million Covid-related black hole that has wrecked its revenue streams. The number of staff at City Hall has swelled by 45 per cent in just four years, rising from 817 in May 2016 to 1,190 in April 2020. Among these include no less than nine staff tasked with responsibilities for inclusion, diversity and fairness – a ratio of one per 132 total employees. Posts include a Programme Director for Economic Fairness who earns between £70,241 and £76,029 compared to a London Assembly Member’s salary of £58,543.

Tuesday

Steerpike

Watch: Biden bagpipes blunder

President Biden makes much of his links to the Emerald Isle, in no small part perhaps because 35 million of his countrymen view themselves as Irish American and live disproportionately in swing states.  Biden, who proudly describes himself as 'five eights' Irish once responded to a British journalist 'BBC? I'm Irish' and was clearly keen to remind Americans of his links this week for St Patrick's Day. His POTUS account tweeted a video of him greeting a bagpiper in the White House with the caption 'They really know how to make an Irishman feel special at the White House.' https://twitter.com/POTUS/status/1373749122566590465?

Steerpike

Prince Harry gets a job in Silicon Valley

Where does one find freedom these days? A billion dollar Silicon Valley tech company now appears to be the answer. Mr S was delighted to read in the Wall Street Journal this afternoon that Prince Harry, 36, will be taking up his first formal job post-Megxit as the chief impact officer at tech start up BetterUp in California.  The Duke of Sussex will be providing 'proactive coaching' for personal development, increased awareness and 'an all-round better life' at the startup which provides professional coaching, mental health advice and 'immersive learning.'  BetterUp was founded in 2013 and recently raised $125m from international investors to fund expansion which valued the company at $1.7bn.

Steerpike

Stanley Johnson and the Covid loophole

Labour have been taking a cheeky pop at the PM's father today in the Guardian over new coronavirus regulations coming into force later this month. Under the guidelines from 29 March, people will be allowed to leave the UK to prepare a second home for sale or rent as part of a list of specific 'reasonable excuses to travel' outside the country. Andrew Gwynne has dubbed this the 'Stanley Johnson clause' in a reference to the latter allegedly breaking Covid guidelines by travelling to his Greek villa to make it 'Covid-proof.

Steerpike

Army argy bargy in Commons clash

Things got a little heated in the House of Commons last night after defence secretary Ben Wallace gave short shrift to fellow Tory MP and ex Royal Anglian Regiment reservist Lieutenant Mark Francois. All hell broke loose after a war of words over the Ministry of Defence (MoD) budget blackhole. Scot’s Guard’s own Captain Wallace pointed out that criticism lobbed from the backbenches about defence procurement would carry a little more weight if the honourable critics had themselves not been former defence ministers overseeing the deficit of which they complained. Lieutenant Francois was particularly aggrieved, demanding corrections to the record and apologies galore.

Steerpike

Now FBPE try to cancel Lionel Barber

It has not been a great nine weeks for the European Union. Readers both inside and outside the supranational bloc will have been horrified at the dithering, disinformation and mixed messages of the commission and its national leaders, now considering an export ban to stop vaccine orders to the UK being honoured. The French position on the Oxford jab for instance has gone from banning it, to allowing it for just those under the age of 65, to allowing it for all, to banning it and now allowing it only for those over 55. Polling now shows 61 per cent of people in that country think the AstraZeneca vaccine is unsafe.  It all seems to have been rather too much for some of Britain's most prominent remainers.

Monday

Steerpike

Watch: Tory MP slams Beeb’s lack of flags

BBC Director General Tim Davie was grilled today by the Commons public accounts committee and for Tory MP James Wild there was one item top of his agenda: flags. It follows last week's sniggering incident in which two BBC breakfast presenters appeared to poke fun at Robert Jenrick's Union Jack. Wild asked Davie: 'In your own report last year of 268 pages, do you know how many union flags were pictured in any of the graphics?' to which the BBC man replied: 'In all the briefings I got for this meeting, that was not one of them' prompting Wild's answer: 'Zero.' https://twitter.com/jamesowild/status/1374052717841223683?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw Wild went on: 'Maybe in the annual report for this year perhaps you could include some imagery around the union flag.

Steerpike

Watch: Theresa May roasts Gavin Williamson

While the rest of SW1 was distracted this afternoon by the findings of the Hamilton report, Mr S tuned in to see Theresa May appear before the National Security Strategy Committee. The former PM remains the master of the withering putdown, as poor Gavin Williamson will have discovered to his cost on watching the meeting back.  Former foreign secretary Margaret Beckett inquired as to how Williamson's alleged leaking (and subsequent sacking) impacted meetings of the National Security Council and May did not hold back. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_7hybp218Js May replied: 'I think we then got back into the rhythm of people recognising that they could speak as freely as they had done previously.