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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Dear oh dear. Rachel Reeves has ended up in something of a pickle over her employment history, with the Chancellor under fire over whether she has been straight with the public about her economist background. Certainly after that Budget, Mr S is hardly surprised eyebrows are being raised… Pressure has been piling on Reeves for
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While farmers gather in Westminster today to protest Labour’s Budget, it appears that north of the border Scottish Labour also have doubts about aspects of Rachel Reeves’s fiscal statement. Party leader Anas Sarwar has now vowed he will bring back the universal winter fuel payment for pensioners in a pushback against a cut brought about
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Ding ding ding! All is not well in the SNP as the Nats are back to fighting among themselves over the issue of double jobs. Last week Westminster leader Stephen Flynn announced that he will stand in the 2026 Holyrood election – and, if successful, he will also continue on in his existing MP role.
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Another day, another Downing Street drama. This time No. 10 is in trouble with the British Sikh community after it transpired its social media accounts failed to acknowledge the religious festival of Gurpurb last week. Now over 300 Sikh groups have addressed a scathing letter to the Prime Minister, blasting Sir Keir Starmer’s blunder as
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After eight years of poorly serving the capital, there was relief from London taxpayers last month when Amy Lamé announced she was standing down as Sadiq Khan’s ‘Night Czar’. On her watch, dozens of clubs, pubs and bars closed down, all the while she continued to enjoy inflation-busting pay rises. It was Mr S who
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To Scotland, where the Nats are once again under scrutiny over expenses claims. It now transpires that not only had SNP health secretary Neil Gray been using ministerial cars to take him to sports matches, he took relatives in the vehicle with him too. The last time Mr S checked, acting ‘in line with government
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Hapless Humza Yousaf certainly picks his battles – and this week the former first minister has taken aim at Elon Musk. On a Tortoise media podcast, Yousaf rather pompously claimed that the tech billionaire was part of a campaign to ‘besmirch’ his reputation and insisted he was ‘certain’ the Twitter CEO had access to his
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The circumstances of David Lammy’s Chagos deal get murkier and murkier. This week, the incumbent Mauritian government went to the polls – and got roundly thrashed. Pravind Jugnauth’s MSM party won just two of the 62 seats in parliament, with the Labour party taking the other 60. Now, five days after losing office, the Mauritian
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Good old Remainiacs: where would be without them? It is eight years now since the UK voted to quit the EU and nearly five since we actually left – but a small band of Hiroo Onoda-impressionists are still refusing to accept those basic facts. Chief among them is ‘Led by Donkeys’, the self-identifying ‘satirists’ who
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Oh dear. It is more than a week since Steerpike broke the news of Downing Street’s Diwali debacle. Many Hindu attendees at the No. 10 reception were horrified to be served alcohol and meat at the event, which aimed to improve the links between Labour and the British Indian community. When Mr S first Downing
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Whether it’s falling masonry or rats, staff in the Houses of Parliament have to put up with a lot in their workplace. Since 2020 they have to endure the daily delight of navigating New Palace Yard in various states of repair. Parly bosses boast that this is to ‘deliver better and more inclusive accessibility, enhanced
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To New Zealand, where parliamentary proceedings have become rather, er, heated during discussions on the Treaty Principles Bill. During a debate about the relationship between Māori and the crown tabled by the libertarian Act party – in which the minority coalition partner is seeking to remove principles from the treaty of Waitangi that protect Māori
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First they came for the Guardian, and then they came for the Clifton Suspension Bridge. In a move that will surely come as a blow to tech billionaire Elon Musk’s global social media platform, the Clifton Suspension Bridge and Museum has announced that it too will boycott the online messaging site over a ‘rise in
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The Archbishop of Canterbury Justin Welby this week announced he will resign from the top job after the pressure piled on from Church of England bishops. The move follows the publication of the Makin Review’s report on the Church’s handling of ‘serial child abuser’ John Smyth – which suggested Welby did not deal with complaints
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It was Norman Tebbit who joked that the Ministry of Agriculture looked after farmers while ‘the job of the Foreign Office is to look after foreigners.’ So Mr S has done some digging and it turns out that the men and women who run FCDO have ensured HM’s government are making a pretty penny or
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As Sir Keir Starmer’s fortunes go from bad to worse, things only seem to be improving for Nigel Farage. While Reform eye up a possible by-election in Runcorn and Helsby with hopes of getting a sixth MP into parliament, the party will have been given a boost today after new YouGov polling has revealed Farage
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The absurdity of the Guardian never fails to amuse. Now the lefty newspaper has decided it is too good for one of the world’s most used social media platforms and today announced it will no longer use Twitter – by posting on, er, Twitter. You couldn’t make it up… Sharing a link to an article
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Back to Scotland, where parliamentarians are under scrutiny over questionable expenses claims – this time on heating their second homes. It transpires that between 2023-24 Scottish politicians claimed a whopping £36,000 in energy bills for their rented homes in Edinburgh, with the Nats and Labour lot making up £26,000 of the total cost. Alright for
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The Terminally Ill Adults has at last been published and MPs can finally pour over the detail. But one supporter of assisted dying who might want to brush up on her answers is Christine Jardine, the Honourable Member for Edinburgh West. Jardine – who is co-sponsoring Kim Leadbeater’s bill in the Commons – appeared on
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They’re the redoubtable men and women who keep our legislature safe. But is the thin blue line around the Commons looking a little bigger these days? Mr S has done some digging and found a Freedom of Information (FOI) request from the Metropolitan Police on fitness tests undertaken by the Parliamentary and Diplomatic Protection unit
