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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It’s not often Mr S jumps to the defence of the EU, but he is prepared to make an exception. A new handball rule in football caused controversy over the weekend after a last-minute goal by Manchester City was ruled out. The reason? City player Aymeric Laporte was judged to have lightly touched the ball
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Conservative party chairman James Cleverly was at the receiving end of another motorist’s ire after a collision on the M11 on Friday evening. Twitter user Asim Khan alleged that the Tory MP clipped the side of his car with his Land Rover 4×4 while he was on his phone. Khan claims that Cleverly accepted liability
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Corbynistas are out to get Jo Swinson again after the Lib Dem leader accused Jeremy Corbyn of being a Brexiteer. ‘Jeremy Corbyn didn’t fight to remain in 2016, and he won’t fight for remain now’, said Swinson. It wasn’t long before the usual suspects leapt to the Labour leader’s defence. Step forward, Owen Jones: ‘This
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Rolling news anchors are known for their ability to continue chuntering on, even when there is very little actual news. But one of the few problems they can’t waffle their way through is a power cut. Earlier today, Sky News suffered what appeared to be a brief outage, made all the more amusing by the
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‘Poetry makes nothing happen,’ a famous poet once said. But Mr S is still disappointed to hear that the nation’s official poet won’t be penning some lines to mark Britain’s departure from the EU. Poet Laureate Simon Armitage said he has ‘no plans’ to commemorate Brexit day on 31 October. Whatever does he do for his annual stipend of £5,750
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Jeremy Corbyn has just given a speech attacking Boris Johnson as ‘Britain’s Trump’. But while the Labour leader is happy to dish out criticism, it seems his supporters don’t like it when the tables are turned. A journalist found that out the hard way when he told Corbyn: ‘It’s clear that you do not have
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David Attenborough is something of a national treasure, but how has the veteran broadcaster managed to maintain his popularity? ‘It’s easy if you don’t have to do controversial things,’ according to Attenborough, who said in an interview in 2017 that if he does have controversial thoughts, he simply doesn’t share them. That strategy seems to have been
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When Jeremy Corbyn put forward his proposal to MPs to help him become prime minister in order to block a no-deal Brexit, the response from the Lib Dems was clear: no. But the Labour leader’s plan has had a warmer reception in an unlikely place – on the Tory backbenches. Guto Bebb told his fellow
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Who is Boris Johnson’s political hero? ‘Obviously Winston Churchill,’ said the Prime Minister yesterday. But Boris also named another figure from antiquity who has inspired him: Pericles of Athens. ‘He believed in the importance of the many, not the few,’ said Boris, helping himself to Labour’s slogan. Boris and Pericles have a few things in common,
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Sarah Wollaston’s decision to take the Liberal Democrat whip is not altogether surprising. What might surprise her constituents, however, is the MP’s announcement that she will continue as their representative without seeking a second vote. After all, Wollaston’s voters at the 2017 general election didn’t have all the facts – they didn’t know what they
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Boris Johnson appeared shell shocked today when he discovered the lengths to which inmates at HMP Leeds go to to exploit prison security. During a tour of the prison, the PM was shown an X-ray scan of the plastic innards of a Kinder egg lodged inside an inmate who was caught sneaking contraband. Johnson recoiled
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Philip Hammond’s former top advisor has confirmed what many in Westminster have known for some time. Writing in the Guardian, ex-special advisor Poppy Trowbridge came out all guns blazing, calling Boris Johnson ‘reckless’ and accusing him of ‘mistaken posturing and trash talk’. In the article, entitled ‘Boris Johnson talks tough but still hasn’t said what he’s
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‘Only a government of national unity can deliver us from no deal,’ according to Guardian columnist Polly Toynbee. But who should lead it? In these turbulent times, Mr S considers eight challengers who might fancy their chances for the top job as national unity leader: Caroline Lucas Caroline Lucas faced embarrassment yesterday after floating the idea
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It’s an emergency! So says Caroline Lucas, who has called for an all-female cabinet to step in and block a no-deal Brexit. The Green party MP said her planned national unity government would hit the ‘pause button’ on Brexit while the likes of Emily Thornberry, Lib Dem leader Jo Swinson, Scotland’s first minister Nicola Sturgeon
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Someone at No. 10 must have had the shock of their lives over the weekend. The new chancellor Sajid Javid had written in the Observer calling for a vote of no confidence in Boris Johnson before offering his ‘full support’ to a government of national unity to extend Article 50. Perhaps the former Remain campaigner
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John McDonnell spent a large amount of his time this week attacking the career history of the newly-promoted Chancellor, Sajid Javid. While some might take heart at the way Javid, as son of a Pakistani bus driver, worked his way up to become a banker and then the second most powerful politician in the country,
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‘Imagine there’s no countries,’ John Lennon once sang. It seems that one Labour MP is taking that song literally. Paul Sweeney, who represents Glasgow North East, had this to say: Well, Mr S. has to admire the scale of Sweeney’s ambitions, but he also wonders whether this plan might not be the best way to
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As the Liberal Democrats celebrate their win in the Brecon and Radnorshire by-election, other parties are licking their wounds. The Tories narrowly missed out and now must deal with the realities of being the governing party with a working majority of one. Labour meanwhile came a distant fourth – only just managing to hold on
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It seems the New York Times has decided to continue its bizarre crusade against Britain, which culminated in last year’s outlandish claim that the nation lives on a diet of mutton and oatmeal (although, given current reports that the government is considering buying up Welsh lamb in the event of a no-deal exit, this strange
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It’s well known that all good Silicon Valley billionaires these days have one issue that is firmly at the top of their agenda. So it’s no surprise that when the owners of the tech behemoth Google hosted their seventh ‘Google Camp’ – a private, three day conference for the rich and famous on the southwest