Steerpike, Author at The Spectator

Monday

29 March 2021

Cambridge comes unstuck on Winnie the Pooh

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

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

26 March 2021

Steerpike

Scottish Covid adviser’s vaccine confusion

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’

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

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

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

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

25 March 2021

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

24 March 2021

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

23 March 2021

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?