Steerpike, Author at The Spectator

Wednesday

9 December 2020

Watch: Speaker attacks Labour MP’s ‘disgraceful behaviour’

Avid PMQs watchers will have spotted an odd occurrence in the Commons just now. Speaker Lindsay Hoyle chastised the Labour MP Chris Bryant, shooing him away and admonishing him for his 'disgraceful behaviour'. But what was the set-to all about? Apparently, Hoyle's former opponent in the election for the speakership last year had been standing in the door of the voting lobby. Unhappy that the Rhondda MP was blocking a door, supposedly open for Covid ventilation, he tried to signal for Bryant to move. There was then a standoff in which Bryant pulled faces and allegedly even swore at the Speaker, perhaps why Hoyle then suggested a Labour whip go and have a word with the clearly agitated MP. Feisty stuff from the former challengers.

Steerpike

Watch: Boris mocks Starmer’s ‘Islington’ exile

Keir Starmer was forced to conduct PMQs from his home this afternoon, after one of his staff members tested positive for coronavirus, and he was instructed to self-isolate. The Labour leader’s image was therefore beamed out from the House of Commons television screens as the Prime Minster stood below. Boris Johnson used the opportunity to get in a dig at the Labour leader’s apparent champagne socialism. The PM declared that he was: ‘delighted to welcome the right honourable gentleman from his vantage point of exile in Islington – his spiritual home – and I wish him all the best in his self-isolation.’ Mr S wonders if the jibe touched a nerve.

Steerpike

Kay Burley backtracks online

Oh dear. Kay Burley's 2020 has taken a turn for the worse after she was caught breaking Tier 2 rules with her 60th birthday celebrations. Burley was taken off air while Sky News bosses began a disciplinary process against her to investigate the claims. As Mr S reported yesterday, her colleagues are seething and she is not expected to return to the screen until the new year at the earliest. So, how is the Sky News anchor taking the news? On Tuesday evening, she posted a tweet in which she insisted that it was always the case she was going to be off over Christmas – owing to a pre-planned trip to Africa to 'sit with lions'. She then cryptically added, ‘they kill for food not sport’.

Tuesday

8 December 2020

Steerpike

How the foreign press covered Britain’s ‘V-day’

There have been some dark days for Britain over the course of the Covid-19 pandemic, but thankfully today was not one of them. Tuesday 8 December has been hailed as ‘V-day’ as the UK became the first country to begin its mass vaccination programme. Tens of thousands of Brits received their injections, including Margaret Keenan, 90, the first person in the world to be given the Pfizer jab outside of a clinical trial, and William Shakespeare, 81, from Warwickshire, who was the second. Across the world, all eyes have been on the UK today. Here’s how the foreign press covered the start of the biggest mass vaccination programme in the NHS’s history.

Steerpike

Labour council’s trendy new street names

How would you feel moving into your new home on Diversity Grove? Or what about a shiny new penthouse on Equality Road? Yes, some Birmingham City Council apparatchik has struck upon the genius idea of naming new streets after lefty buzzwords. The absurd project was announced earlier today after a public competition to name the freshly built roads in a 1,400 home development (although the Labour council didn't mention how many — or how few — people bothered to actually enter the competition). The winning entries came from nearby resident Louise who said she wanted to 'reflect the diversity' of the area by choosing vacuous moralising phrases that will have a 'positive meaning for local people'. https://twitter.com/BhamCityCouncil/status/1336235080197550081?

Steerpike

Watch: 91-year-old’s charming post-vaccine interview

The eyes of the world were on Britain today, as the first patients began to receive the Pfizer vaccine, after it was cleared by Britain’s health regulators as safe to use. Unsurprisingly, foreign TV news channels sent their crews to British hospitals to witness the first patients receiving the jab. Outside Guy’s Hospital in London, CNN managed to catch up with one charming 91-year-old, who had managed to receive the jab after ringing up the hospital to see if they had any spare shots going. As Martin Kenyon explained though, his main difficulty in getting the vaccine was finding a parking spot in London. Mr Kenyon explained that he had taken the vaccine as, ‘Well, there’s no point in dying now, when I’ve lived this long.

Steerpike

Downing Street’s royal snub

Making the case for the union is a rather uphill task these days. With the SNP on course for a majority in next year's Scottish parliament elections and First Minister Nicola Sturgeon polling well with the public, many Tory MPs comes across as rather defeatist on the issue. But try they must. So, Mr S was curious to listen in to today's No. 10 lobby briefing. Sturgeon has had some rare negative press this week after she refused to endorse the decision by the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge to embark on a three-day tour – stopping in Edinburgh. Critics suggested she was being a misery-guts – putting nationalism ahead of an effort by the popular couple to thank those workers who helped guide the country through the Covid crisis. So when a No.

Steerpike

Is it one rule for Sky News, another for everyone else?

Kay Burley is hardly what you would call a ‘sympathetic personality’ – but Steerpike is a magnanimous sort and he can’t help feeling a little sorry for her on this chilly winter’s morning. The poor presenter is having a miserable time because, having spent much of the year berating others for their failings vis Covid, she has been caught breaching the stop-the-spread rules herself in order to celebrate her 60th birthday. Who doesn’t deserve a little bit of a dinner out — or two — to celebrate becoming a sexagenarian (her special day is actually on December 17th, but hey who’s counting)?

Steerpike

Has Kay Burley just been cancelled?

It's a big morning for news in the UK as the first patients receive the Pfizer coronavirus jabs and Brexit deadlines loom. So, one would have imagined Kay Burley would be front and centre of her self-titled morning breakfast show. Apparently not. Mr S was curious to note Burley's absence on today's show — with Sky News's Sarah Hewson instead broadcasting from Coventry University Hospital, where the first vaccinations are taking the place. It appears Burley has been deemed a safety risk after Guido broke the news that the Sky News anchor had breached social distancing rules with her 60th birthday celebration. Her crime?

Monday

7 December 2020

Steerpike

Watch: vaccine minister rules out ‘immunity passports’

This morning the new vaccine deployment minister, Nadhim Zahawi, appeared to change his tune when it comes to the use of ‘immunity passports’ for the British public. After telling the BBC last week that UK residents might need some proof of their Covid vaccination status to dine out at a restaurant or attend a sporting event, Zahawi rolled back his comments on Spectator TV. In a Q&A following his keynote speech at The Spectator's Health Summit (held in partnership with MSD), Zahawi told broadcaster Alastair Stewart that so-called 'immunity passports' were not actually on the cards: 'There will not be an immunity passport. I may have misspoken or it was conflated in the interview I gave. I was talking about the brilliant use of the app...

Thursday

3 December 2020

Steerpike

Khan aide works from home… in California

Running London, you might have thought, should probably involve some knowledge of London. Living in the city would be a good start — or at least living in the same time zone. But Sadiq Khan's top aide clearly disagrees. Jack Stenner, the Mayor of London's director of political and public affairs, upped sticks and moved to sunny San Francisco earlier this year, according to an investigation by the Sun. The £120,000-a-year political lifer moved 5,000 miles away back in October, instead shacking up with his girlfriend in an 'ocean-facing apartment', the paper reports. Nice work if you can get it — who knows, perhaps Mr S might start applying for some cushy mayoral jobs...

Wednesday

2 December 2020

Steerpike

Rishi Sunak’s sickly sweet snaps

Vanity photographers are a relatively recent addition to Westminster life, one that Mr S doesn't wholly welcome. The growth of the in-house snapper has meant that politicians are able to control their image in a way that previous generations of ministers would have found impossible. David Cameron famously had his advisers cover any nearby exit signs to stop pesky snappers from taking unflattering photos (sadly for Ed Balls, his advisers were unable to stop this unfortunate pic). Rishi Sunak's photographer seems to have taken such lessons a step further during a photo-op at Hamleys toy shop. Not content with steering his boss away from adverse signage, he has apparently embraced the 'dishy Rishi' narrative by snapping the Chancellor in front of a sign reading 'scrumpalicious!

Steerpike

Boris Johnson’s email faux pas

When it comes to Boris Johnson's skills as a politician, his particular communication style is regularly cited as a talent that makes him stand out as a leader. He was, after all, an accomplished journalist before stepping into the world of politics. So Mr S was a little surprised by the email that landed in his inbox this morning purporting to be from the Prime Minister. In it, recipients were invited to join the Prime Minister and Chancellor for an online chat — and encouraged to donate large sums in return for hearing 'never before shared stories from that campaign as well as the unprecedented year that followed, from getting Brexit done to tackling the coronavirus'.

Steerpike

Farage’s Channel migrant rescue

Over the weekend, Nigel Farage was involved in a rescue operation in the English Channel. Having headed out for a Sunday morning of sea fishing, Farage spotted two men adrift in an inflatable kayak about five miles off the Kent coast. The ex-kipper turned skipper called the coast guard before trying to pull the pair onto his boat. 'One of them was clearly in a very bad way,' Farage told Mr S, 'We had to get this bloke on board, there's no way he could have survived in the sea. We did our best but we could not lift him over the gunwales.' When Border Force did arrive, it seems they and Farage had a standoff.

Steerpike

Piers Morgan tries to jump the vaccine queue

This morning the UK became the first country in the West to licence a vaccine, after regulators approved the Pfizer/BioNTech shot. The ruling opens the way for the vaccine to be rolled out nationwide, after the UK purchased 40 million doses of Pfizer’s vaccine. The Health Secretary has said we will have 800,000 doses ready next week. So far, it seemed fairly clear who would be first to receive the vaccine. The government has published a list of ‘priority groups’ who will be first in line, starting with those who live and work in care homes, followed by the over-80s and NHS workers, before progressively moving down the age bands. The idea is to make sure the most vulnerable have access to the vital protection they need while vaccines are still in short supply.

Tuesday

1 December 2020

Steerpike

Jeremy Corbyn, Covid rebel

What would the Labour party look like if Jeremy Corbyn was still in charge? On the long list of things that would be likely be different to Labour now under Keir Starmer are Brexit, the response to the EHRC inquiry and even whether Corbyn was still classed as a Labour MP. Now there's a new item to add to the list: coronavirus. This evening Corbyn has voted against the government's proposed restrictions and new tier system. Explaining his decision, the former Labour leader took to social media to question both the measures and the financial support packages.

Steerpike

The curious case of the Brussels ‘orgy’

Belgium has had some of the toughest coronavirus restrictions in Europe during the second wave of the pandemic, with hospitality venues closed and socialising severely restricted. So Mr Steerpike was surprised to note this interesting story in the Belgian press today, which suggested that some may not be following the rules as closely as expected. According to La Dernière Heure, 25 men were arrested this weekend after their lockdown festivities were interrupted by the police. The paper writes: ‘Twenty-five men in their birthday suits were interrupted in the middle of a gang bang on Friday evening in Brussels, close to the central police station of the capital’.

Monday

30 November 2020

Steerpike

Michael Gove’s lockdown claims: a review of the evidence

In a 2,000-word essay published over the weekend, Michael Gove sought to win round Tory rebels by arguing that ‘lockdown was the only way to stop the NHS being broken’. In the article, the cabinet minister paints a picture of an NHS all set to be flattened until lockdown 2 was introduced: 'Infections were doubling fast’ at the time of lockdown — and only lockdown saved the day. Gove uses this to make his new argument: the only strategy for stopping the NHS from being overwhelmed now is the government's new tougher three-tier system. While the article won some applause online it has also irritated several of Gove's colleagues. Colleagues who the government hopes will vote for the new tier system come Tuesday.

Steerpike

Watch: Diane Abbott forgets her own voting record

What should we do with foreign criminals, people who come to this country and then commit cruel and violent crimes against law-abiding British residents? If your answer is to deport them, then that is, according to Diane Abbott, 'cruel and potentially dangerous'. During an urgent question from Labour earlier this afternoon, the former shadow home secretary criticised the decision to return a flight full of convicted foreign criminals to Jamaica. These are criminals who, according to Home Office minister Chris Philp, were found guilty of 'sexual assault against children, murder, rape, drug dealing and violent crime'. Abbott suggested it was potentially dangerous to deport these 'vulnerable people' during a pandemic.

Steerpike

What can pubs serve as a ‘substantial meal’?

When the new tiered restrictions come into force this week, many pubs and bars around the country will be wondering if they can keep their doors open. While Tier 3 venues have effectively been forced to close, pubs in Tier 2 (which covers around 50 per cent of England) have been told they can only serve alcohol to customers alongside a ‘substantial meal’. But what counts as substantial? Environment minister George Eustice attempted to clarify this on LBC radio this morning, when he suggested that a scotch egg would probably count, as long as it was brought over on a plate. But Mr Steerpike has noticed that ministers seemed to be a little confused when it comes to the guidance.