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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This week there have been two rival Corbyn dramas being played out across London. In Westminster, the Labour leader struggles to get a grip on the anti-Semitism crisis taking over his party, while over in Waterloo Corbyn faces a nuclear dilemma. While both seem fantastical, unfortunately only one is make believe. Corbyn the Musical: the Motorcycle Diaries — written by Rupert Myers
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Oh dear. Whichever bright spark over at Labour HQ decided it would be a good idea to send Rupa Huq on Today to defend Naz Shah will now be regretting it. The Labour MP for Ealing Central appeared to take the Ken Livingstone approach in the interview, opting to play down Shah’s sharing of anti-Semitic
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Just when you thought things couldn’t look much worse for Labour’s Naz Shah, Ken Livingstone arrives on the scene. After Shah apologised several times today for sharing anti-Semitic posts on social media, she has finally been suspended. However, not everyone appears to see what the big deal is. Popping up on LBC, Red Ken offered Iain Dale his take
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It’s finally happened. Over 24 hours after news first broke of Naz Shah sharing anti-Semitic posts online, the Labour MP has been suspended. While Labour say this is by ‘mutual agreement’, the move comes after several apologies from Shah — and quite a long silence from Corbyn. However, the use of the term ‘mutual agreement’ is of
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Last week Vote Leave’s Dom Cummings was hauled before the Treasury Select Committee to be grilled on the Brexit campaign by a po-faced Andrew Tyrie. What followed was a lively exchange between Cummings and the committee chair as Tyrie tried to pin Cummings down on figures used in Vote Leave’s campaign literature. Today Cummings’s comrade
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With little love lost between the Prime Minister and Nigel Farage, today the Ukip leader found himself on the receiving end of David Cameron’s ire during PMQs. When asking Cameron whether the public should listen to Brexit figures like Nigel Farage, Ben Bradshaw pronounced Farage’s name as ‘Farridge’. This delighted Cameron, who proceeded to blast Farage for
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Forget the big election debates, the defining moment of Ed Miliband’s Labour leadership was his attempt at eating a bacon sandwich. In 2014 ahead of the local and European elections, Miliband appeared pained and confused as he attempted to eat a bacon sandwich in Covent Garden. The pictures that followed went everywhere as he became
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As Zac Goldsmith lags behind Sadiq Khan in the polls ahead of the London mayoral election, it’s a case of all hands on deck in order to boost his chances come polling day. However, while David Cameron used PMQs last week to do exactly this — attacking Sadiq Khan for his links to extremists — the Prime Minister
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Although Nicola Sturgeon puts her career in politics down to Margaret Thatcher, she scarcely has anything positive to say about the Iron Lady. In fact, the SNP leader says that she entered politics as a result of her anger at the impact of Thatcher’s politics on Scotland. Still, she appears to have no qualms about borrowing one of the
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As more and more people identify as ‘gender-fluid’, there is growing hostility in some quarters towards traditional gender stereotypes. In fact, for some the term ‘masculinity’ has become a dirty word. Grayson Perry — the cross-dressing Turner prize-winning artist — is one such person. Perry has recently spent his time creating a whole television programme for
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With the junior doctors’ strike now in full swing, it’s fair to say that these aren’t the most harmonious days staff at the Department of Health have ever seen. Perhaps that’s why they are looking for a new Director of Communications to take charge of the department’s ‘external and internal communication activities across a complex
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Given that the last time Dennis Skinner criticised a Tory Cabinet member in the Chamber he was ejected from the Commons, the Beast of Bolsover was on remarkably mild form today. Following Jeremy Hunt’s statement on the planned junior doctors strike, Skinner told the Health Secretary that he ought to ‘wipe that smirk off his face’: ‘When the
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In recent weeks, Labour’s Sadiq Khan has faced flak over his decision to share platforms with extremists. In a recent Evening Standard article, Khan was criticised for sharing a ‘platform with five Islamic extremists’ at an event organised by Friends of Al-Aqsa. At the 2004 conference titled ‘Palestine — the suffering still goes on’, both Khan
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As Sadiq Khan continues to lead the polls in the mayoral race, the Labour candidate has managed to brush off much criticism over his links to unsavoury characters by putting it down to ‘dog whistle’ politics. However, the MP for Tooting may have greater difficulty fending off the latest line of attack to come his way. Writing in
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There was something odd about Obama’s ‘back of the queue’ Brexit comment yesterday — and it wasn’t just that he felt he could dictate US trade policy for a time when he wouldn’t even be in power. The thing that struck Mr S was the phrasing of his message: ‘I think it’s fair to say that
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As Barack Obama urges the UK to stick with the EU on his final official trip to Britain, there has been a security clampdown ahead of his arrival. Large parts of London have become no-go zones for drones while the President is in town. Happily, Obama appears to be taking no chances himself either. Mr
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As Sadiq Khan continues to face flak over his links to unsavoury characters, even a night at home in front of the television could now prove problematic. In this week’s episode of the BBC’s American Crime Story: The People v OJ Simpson, John Travolta acts out a scene about a man who Khan would no doubt like
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Although Julian Fellowes recently promised to take a backseat in the EU debate after growing tired of celebrities telling people what to do, he is still able to grace us with his thoughts on Jeremy Corbyn’s Labour. In an interview with BA High Life, the Conservative peer — and Downton Abbey writer — discusses the current state
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Although Jeremy Corbyn’s aides refused to confirm whether he would give a tribute to the Queen on her 90th birthday, the Labour leader did manage to put his republican tendencies to one side today in order to mark the happy occasion. After wishing Her Majesty a happy birthday, he went on to give his football team
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It fell on Ed Vaizey, the culture minister, to defend George Osborne’s dodgy EU dossier on the BBC’s Daily Politics. As you might expect, he didn’t do a very good job of it. Could he explain why the Chancellor used his new, misleading metric of “GDP per household” instead of the proper (and lower) figure of household income? No,
