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
Labour says it is tough on welfare policy. And today, the party launched its tough compulsory jobs guarantee funding pledge by looking tough too. Ed Balls, Ed Miliband and Rachel Reeves would have made a stronger Mr Steerpike quail in these hard-hitting outfits.
David Cameron spoke to Barack Obama on the phone last night. That's pretty difficult to imagine, isn't it? A man on the phone. Screw up your eyes and furrow your brow all you like: you'll never quite make that mental leap to imagining what a chap on the phone really does look like. So thank goodness that the Prime Minister is there to help you out. Last night he didn't just tell us that he'd been on the phone, he tweeted out a photo of him on the phone with a Serious Phone Face. Still a bit difficult to imagine, though, isn't it? He should have added an audioboo of him talking in his Special Phone Voice. It's not the first time Cameron has helped us imagine what he looks like on the phone, though.
The Today programme's early morning audience were roused by a very excited reporter chasing Bono at the Oscars this morning. 'Bono! BONO!' he shouted, before the Great Man himself strolled over to offer Radio 4 listeners some, er, unique wisdom. listen to ‘BONO! BONO!
Have the Oscar Pistorius defence team been watching The Simpsons? Michell Burger, the opening prosecution witness at the athlete's murder trial, told the court in South Africa how she woke in the middle of the night to the sound of 'terrible screams'. Pistorius' lawyers say the 'blood curdling' screams were his and because he was so anxious he sounded like a woman. Which Simpson's fans will remember was what happened when Ned was accused of killing his wife....
Whatever happens to David Cameron, he will have some reading material post 2015. Dr Anthony Seldon has announced that he will be writing about the Cameron years, just as he did for the Blair and Brown premierships. Seldon plans to publish two books: The Cameron Effect, written with Dr Mike Finn, and Cameron at 10, with Peter Snowdon. Both will be released after the election. Seldon is not the only scribe documenting the life and times of our chillaxing PM; former Sunday Times Political Editor Isabel Oakeshott has revealed more details about her book (co-written with Lord Ashcroft): ‘When I interviewed the Prime Minister for the Sunday Times at New Year, I was struck by a casual remark he made.
Having been whole-heartedly hacked off during the phone hacking scandal, one assumes that Sir Paul McCartney has always been an advocate of high standards in journalism. Not so. While collecting a gong for songwriting at the NME Awards last night, the former Beatle admitted trying to slip fake stories past the music magazine: ‘One of the things we used to like to try and do was to plant a false story in the NME,’ he said. ‘We actually got in with 'George was Billy Fury's cousin', which he wasn't. Living on the edge, man, you know what I'm saying?’ Someone send for Leveson.
Things certainly seemed cosy between Angela Merkel and her favourite 'naughty nephew' when David Cameron greeted the German Chancellor in Downing Street earlier. So what on earth was said between that greeting and this sofa moment? I'm happy to welcome Angela Merkel to my Downing St flat, after her excellent address to Parliament. pic.twitter.
Gobby Janet Street Porter has been silenced – for today at least. She pulled out of this morning's edition of the BBC’s Daily Politics just two hours before broadcast when she discovered that Louise Mensch was being patched in from New York to take her on. There’s history here. JSP once said that Mrs Mensch resides in the ‘slop bucket of females who've let the side down’. Sources tell Mr S that JSP didn’t want to defend her words. Pity, as it would have been quite the catfight.
‘The cyber-nat activity is disgraceful. They will trash anyone who disagrees with them. Their intention is to make people keep their heads down. Salmond could stop it, but he doesn't choose to,’ said Alistair Darling, leader of the Better Together campaign, last month. Supporters of Scottish nationalism have dominated the web for the last five years, slinging abuse and hatred at anyone who dares to speak in favour of the Union. They began in the Scottish newspapers’ online comment sections, honed their craft via email and found full voice with the advent of social media. Twitter is the cesspool of choice for the ‘cyber-nat’ community.
If Grant Shapps and John Major gave a speech but no journalists were there to cover it, did it really happen? That’s what happened today. The Tories invited one pooled camera into their headquarters to see the former prime minister stand next to the party chairman in a belated attempt to prove that at least two senior Tories did not go to Eton. Loyal MPs and spinners delivered the speech line-by-line on Twitter; but the only interesting bits were briefed out to the Daily Mail last night. Apparently, Sir John could only afford half an hour off from watching cricket, so there was no time for a Q&A – nothing at all to do with his off-message comments that have generated plenty of column inches over the last year.
Today's Cabinet meeting in Aberdeen, now underway, has given ministers plenty of opportunity to stare earnestly at Scottish things while trying to make the case for the Union. Here are some of Mr Steerpike's favourites. [caption id="attachment_8719911" align="alignnone" width="620"] Image copyright The Cabinet Office[/caption] All captions gratefully received in the comments...
News of J. Edgar Hoover’s interest in Sir David Frost resurfaced in yesterday's Sunday Times. In an FBI memo, which Mr S has seen, Hoover wrote, ‘Check with our legal attaché in London. Frost shows every indication of being a hippie’. A cable instructing the London office to conduct an ‘extremely discreet check re-Frost’ is below. Needless to say, the Feds never found anything on Frost. Mr S wonders why Hoover suspected Frost of being a ‘hippie’. At the time in question, Frost was doing 8 TV shows a week on both sides of the Atlantic: leaving little time for daisy chains and hemp knitting. Maybe his sideburns were seditious?
What is the Chancellor describing here during an event in Sydney? Or perhaps this is a new hand gesture to deploy against Ed Balls at Treasury Questions?
Lamentations spread across Westminster when rumour had it that the Red Lion on Whitehall was to be reborn as trendy metropolitan wine bar. The old boozer was the scene of many a knifing (of the political variety) and much happy plotting, being a regular haunt for the bag carrying and spinning classes. Well, Mr S has some good news. After closing for refurbishment, the Red Lion has reopened and looks exactly the same. Nothing seems to have changed at all. Trebles all round. Picture via Political Pictures.
Lucky Lord Adonis has spent the last few days travelling around London by bus as part of his ‘London By Bus’ campaign. He’s been chatting to commuters and sharing interesting facts like bus route 25 carries 64,000 passengers a day which is equivalent to the population of Crewe. As the picture above shows, he’s setting the town on fire. Now, I’m sure that his lordship takes his role as Shadow Infrastructure Minister very seriously (who wouldn’t); but is there more at play here? The sheer volume of pictures of him meeting concerned parties and pointing at various things might indicate the imminent launch of an election campaign.
People pay Tony Blair handsomely for his PR advice; but, today, thanks to the hacking trial at the Old Bailey, we allegedly get to see a glimpse of the Great Man in action for free. The court was shown this email sent by Rebekah Brooks on the day after the last ever edition of the News of the Screws went to press; it is an account of a conversation she claims to have had with Tony Blair: Only got 10 minutes before I see Charlie for confiscation! I had an hour on the phone to Tony Blair. He said: 1. Form an independent unit that has an outside junior counsel, Ken Macdonald, a great and good type, a serious forensic criminal barrister, internal counsel, proper fact checkers etc in it. Get them to investigate me and others and publish a Hutton style report. 2.
It seems the launch of the new Liberal Democrat website is not going very well. Apparently the party of tuition fees and Nick Clegg is 'untrusted'. 'What should you do?', it asks. Lib Dem HQ will be hoping most people do not click 'Get me out of here!' come 2015. With their recent overtures to Labour, those that do vote yellow should certainly 'understand the risks'.
Mr S doesn't usually notice A List waists, but he wasn't totally surprised when he heard that Matt Damon was on a diet during the filming of Monuments Men. While your correspondent has no reason to be smug, he will say that Damon wasn't looking quite his Jason Bourne self. Steerpike was surprised, however, to learn that Damon's diet apparently consisted of just one thing: grapes. Speaking at the premiere, co-star Bob Balaban told me ‘Matt was trying to lose weight and was hardly eating anything, just grapes.’ Am I the only person who thought that Matt Damon preferred apples? 'How do you like them grapes?' doesn't have quite the same ring to it.
Pint-sized Tory MP Dominic Raab ruffled the feathers of the powerful with his amendment to the Immigration Bill last month, which forced the government into a humiliating abstention. Raab has a growing group of supporters (who call themselves the Raabels) on the backbenches. His popularity has made an impression in the corridors of power. I hear that spinners for one Cabinet minister have taken to turning down broadcast bids by saying: 'Try Dominic Raab, he's always keen for publicity!
Prince Harry’s disdain for the media is well documented; but it was William who got grumpy today, telling Guardian journalist Robert Booth: ‘Why don't you put your notebook down and give us a hand with the sandbags?’ Booth offered to help: ‘But when your reporter agreed to help, aides stepped in and said it would not be possible due to a lack of the right sort of clothing.’ Typical health and safety mumbo jumbo, etcetera. The royal PR operation is a slick machine these days. Opportunities are rarely missed, which is why the princes were up bright and early this morning to get in on the action.
