Steerpike

Steerpike

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

Sunday

Steerpike

James Cleverly: no one will go to jail over national service

From our UK edition

Well, Rishi Sunak’s new flagship policy of reintroducing national service has certainly gone off with a bang this morning. The policy, announced last night, would see 18-year-olds given the option of applying for a military post, or spending one weekend every month for a year working for the fire services, police, the NHS, or local charities. According to the Conservative party the scheme will be mandatory.  What happens though if young people refuse to take part? It seemed initially at least the Tories were feeling bullish about cracking down on any absconding youths, with a leaked internal Q&A from the Conservatives suggesting that the party wasn’t ruling out arresting 18-year-olds dodging their civic duty.

Saturday

Steerpike

Is Michael Gove set to become the next Strictly star?

From our UK edition

As the exodus of Conservative MPs continues, Mr S is rather curious about what alternative careers retiring Tories have in their sights. The number of Conservative politicians stepping down at the general election is 78 and counting — and on Friday night, a resignation announcement from a high-profile Tory veteran stunned the nation. Michael Gove, currently Secretary of State for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities, announced just days after Sunak called the snap election that he would not be contesting his Surrey Heath seat, despite having a rather impressive majority of over 18,000. The Tory Trot wrote that: I know the toll office can take, as do those closest to me. No-one in politics is a conscript. We are volunteers who willingly choose our fate.

Friday

Steerpike

Reform branch urges its voters to turn out on a Saturday

From our UK edition

Richard Tice was out yesterday at Reform's big election launch, proudly declaring that his party is ready for the upcoming election. 'We are going to win seats' he promised, as he revealed that Reform will be standing candidates in all 630 seats in England, Wales and Scotland. One of those areas is Gravesham in Kent, currently represented by Tory Adam Holloway. The local Reform branch is excitedly tweeting graphics about Tice's plans to 'freeze immigration, scrap Net Zero' and deliver 'high growth'. So it was so somewhat unfortunate then that in their haste to hail the forthcoming election they, er, get the date wrong. On their Twitter/X account, Reform Gravesham proudly announced that it was 'ready for the General Election on 6th July'.

Steerpike

JK Rowling takes aim at Starmer over Duffield snub

From our UK edition

Oh dear. It's not yet 48 hours since Prime Minister Rishi Sunak called a general election and already tensions are running high. Now it transpires that Labour backbencher and vocal women's rights campaigner Rosie Duffield was not invited to her own party's election launch in Kent despite being an, er, Kent MP. Making a rather public show of party infighting is hardly a good start to election season... A rather unimpressed Duffield took to Twitter — after she found out about the launch event on the social media platform — to write: 'Well, day one has gone well then..! Strong women can't be broken that easily, lads. And I have an army of them behind me, in front of me, beside me and holding me up.

Steerpike

Watch: Sunak’s torturous Titanic exchange

From our UK edition

It's day two of the election campaign and things aren't looking up for Rishi Sunak. After the downpour on the Wednesday and the Euros blunder on the Thursday, today the Prime Minister produced his third viral moment of the campaign on a visit to Belfast. As the latest polls revealed that his party is still 20 points behind Labour, Sunak and his team decided to tour a thriving Northern Irish business situated, somewhat unfortunately, in Titanic Quarter. With local hacks already annoyed by the ‘shambolic’ nature of the visit, it was left to James McCarthy of BelfastLive to ask Sunak the obvious question: Prime Minister, we are just yards away from where the Titanic was built and designed. Are you the captain of a sinking ship going into this election?

Steerpike

Watch: May swipes at Truss in her final speech as MP

From our UK edition

So. Farewell then to the Covid parliament. It's been a remarkable five years in British politics, what with the pandemic, Brexit, the change of monarch and the wars in Ukraine and Gaza. But with the Commons due to dissolve next Thursday, one of the great features which Mr S will miss the most is the number of ex-Prime Ministers we had in this parliament. Liz Truss may be clinging on but Boris Johnson bowed out last summer and now Theresa May is quitting too. But not without one final blast at one of her short-lived successors... Speaking in the Commons for the final time today, the Maybot of Maidenhead provided a few glimpses into the soul behind her outward armour. Reflecting on how being an MP 'is the best job in the world', she remarked that it does have its 'frustrations...

Steerpike

Corbyn to stand as an independent MP

From our UK edition

Amidst the election drama it would be easy to forget about one rather eccentric politician. Today Jeremy Corbyn has announced today that he will stand as an independent candidate for the seat of Islington North — after significant speculation about whether he would be welcomed back into the Labour fold. After holding the seat for 40 years, Corbyn says he will not defend views held by either the Tories or his former party Labour — including the two-child benefit cap and rent controls. Blocked from standing again for Labour, and suspended for remarks he made after the equalities watchdog report into antisemitism in the part, Jezza will be expelled for standing against the party at the election.

Thursday

Steerpike

Ex-SNP chief’s charge sheet submitted to Crown Office

From our UK edition

It’s a day that ends in ‘y’, which means more chaos for the beleaguered SNP. Now it transpires that Scotland’s Crown Office has finally received Peter Murrell’s charge sheet – after he was charged with embezzlement from the SNP over a month ago. The husband of former SNP leader and first minister of Scotland Nicola Sturgeon was taken into police custody for the second time on 18 April as part of the police probe into SNP finances. Shortly after the police force announced that it had charged the former SNP chief, it emerged that Murrell had also resigned his party membership.

Steerpike

Watch: Sunak’s Welsh football blunder

From our UK edition

It’s the beginning of a general election campaign, which can only mean one thing: politicians pretending to care about football to connect with the punters.  Rishi Sunak kicked things off, with his first campaign stop at a brewery in Wales this afternoon – a brave choice of venue for a politician many voters think really couldn’t organise a piss-up in a brewery after his rain-soaked election announcement yesterday.  Keen to pal it up with the assembled Welsh brewers, and no doubt mindful that his election campaign was going to overlap with this year’s Euros, Sunak asked the group if they were looking forward to ‘all the football’.

Steerpike

SNP’s Matheson handed suspension and salary cut over iPad scandal

From our UK edition

Uh oh. In non-election news north of the border, the Scottish government’s former health secretary Michael Matheson has been handed both a suspension and salary ban after his rather humiliating £11,000 iPad scandal was exposed. As Mr S has written previously, Matheson has been in the doghouse for months after it was revealed he lied about his roaming bill and tried to make the taxpayer cover his costs. And now, it seems, he is finally getting his comeuppance... Holyrood's standards committee has today called for Matheson to be suspended for 27 days and the cross-party group also wants to see the backbencher's salary withdrawn for 54 days — a fine that roughly equates to the size of the former minister's data roaming charges.

Steerpike

Simon Case’s worst moments at the Covid Inquiry

From our UK edition

Amidst all the election drama and hurried campaign launches, it would be easy to forget the public inquiries taking place at present. But fear not, Mr S has gathered together the most notable parts of today's Covid Inquiry, where Cabinet Secretary Dr Simon Case is making a rather delayed appearance after he was unable to attend last year due to illness. Let's take a look at what he has said so far... Bad language Today's hearing had barely started before Case was forced to apologise for the use of some rather, um, robust language highlighted in message exchanges where he had insulted both Boris Johnson and Rishi Sunak, amongst other senior government figures.

Steerpike

Watch: Sunak admits no Rwanda flights will go before election

From our UK edition

As election campaigns officially kick off, Prime Minister Rishi Sunak is back on the airwaves today just hours after he called a general election. On a wet Wednesday evening, a soaking Sunak called on the British people lend his party their support. The Tories would improve the economy, enhance national security and get tougher on migration, the Prime Minister pledged. And yet when quizzed on his immigration deterrent this morning, the PM’s response didn’t sound all that promising… On BBC Breakfast, the Prime Minister was pressed on stats that showed record levels of illegal crossings to the UK between January to March of this year in a 'reality check' that he had 'not stopped the boats'.

Wednesday

Steerpike

Watch: Sky journalist thrown out of Tory launch

From our UK edition

Oh dear. Not much time has passed since Rishi Sunak’s bombshell general election announcement this afternoon but already tensions are running high. After being kept waiting for the Prime Minister’s electoral update today, journalists are channelling their pent-up energy into providing rolling Rishi coverage — which includes trying to sneak into the Tory party’s official campaign launch event this evening. But one Sky journalist received a rather frosty reception when he attempted to cover tonight’s Conservative campaign event at the ExCeL centre in east London. Although selective media arrangements were in place, the broadcaster decided to try to pop in anyway — much to the irritation of several unimpressed security guards, who rather promptly escorted him back out again.

Steerpike

Might Sunak actually win? A history of election miracles

From our UK edition

Is it madness to call a general election when you’re 20 points behind in the polls? That depends on whether the pollsters and pundits are any more reliable now than when they promised us that Brexit would flop, that Hillary would win and that David Cameron had a 0.5 per cent chance of winning the general election. The last ten years have seen a stream of against-all-odds election victories — and Rishi Sunak’s only hope is that he can pull off one of these miracles. Here are four that he might have in mind... 1. David Cameron’s 2015 majority Such is the hubris of the pollsters that in 2015 they started to produce percentage chances of possible election outcomes. Populus, run by Andrew ‘calamity’ Cooper, created his ‘predictor’ model for the Financial Times.

Steerpike

Cameron snubs Albania for impromptu cabinet meeting

From our UK edition

Dear oh dear. Rishi Sunak failed to quash election speculation in this afternoon’s Prime Minister’s Questions and now lobby hacks are desperately trying to figure out whether a big announcement really is looming. In their hunt for clues, a number of journalists have drawn attention to the cancellation of two rather high profile events as Foreign Secretary David Cameron and Defence Secretary Grant Shapps hurry back to Westminster for an impromptu cabinet meeting this afternoon. Shapps has delayed a political visit to Eastern Europe for this afternoon’s meeting – which sources have told the Guardian is rather unusual given ministers are able to request a pass not to attend. But if political correspondents across the country are frustrated by the lack of direction coming from No.

Steerpike

Watch: Former Post Office chief breaks down at inquiry

From our UK edition

The Post Office inquiry rumbles on and now it’s the turn of former chief executive Paula Vennells in the hot seat. It’s the first of her three days of hearings and already the former boss is not having a good time of it… Vennells was quizzed on her leadership during the scandal, and how much she really knew of the institution’s troublesome Horizon IT system that was incorrectly registering losses at post office branches across the UK. While the system’s failings were not sufficiently flagged, anxious subpostmasters across the country desperately tried to make up for unexplained deficits by piling in their own life savings, with some Post Office workers remortgaging their houses to find the funds.

Steerpike

Watch: ‘Bionic MP’ welcomed back to parliament

From our UK edition

It’s a momentous day for Conservative MP Craig Mackinlay. Today the Tory politician returned to the Commons following a prolonged battle with sepsis after being admitted to hospital with the life-threatening condition last September. After becoming suddenly unwell overnight, the politician was rushed to A&E where he developed disseminated intravascular coagulation (DIC). In a bid to save his life, all four of his limbs were amputated. In a video taken at his bedside by his wife and shared in today’s Telegraph, Mackinlay was filmed before the extreme surgery, telling the camera that ‘this is the last time that these old things [his limbs] which have served me well for 57 years will be attached to me. They are gnarled, dry and desiccated.

Steerpike

Wallace turns his guns on the Foreign Office

From our UK edition

Uh oh. This time, it seems, mandarins at the Foreign Office have finally gone too far. In a scathing piece penned for the Telegraph, former defence secretary Ben Wallace has opened fire on civil servants after the Foreign Office drew up a statement on the death of Iran’s president. Ministers have refused to use wording supplied to them to call the demise of a man dubbed the ‘Butcher of Tehran’ a ‘tragedy’. And Wallace has more to say on it all too… Taking to the paper today, Wallace questioned: ‘In what world was it the correct thing to do to stand in silence for the Iranian president?

Steerpike

Listen: BBC’s Emma Barnett in bust up with Jeremy Hunt

From our UK edition

Another day, another drama. This time it involves the BBC’s Today programme, where interviewer Emma Barnett was quizzing Jeremy Hunt on the UK’s economic prospects. The conversation didn’t go quite as smoothly as planned for the Chancellor… Barnett started on how today’s inflation figures have decreased to 2.3 per cent this morning — the lowest level in three years — which Hunt first hailed as ‘good news’, before admitting it may take a little longer until voters feel better off. His interviewer then went on to broach the subject of Liz Truss, lecturing Hunt on how ‘some of the shocks’ of the former PM’s premiership are ‘still being felt’ by the population.

Tuesday

Steerpike

Prince Harry loses bid to name Murdoch in phone-hacking trial

From our UK edition

As much as Prince Harry claims to hate the media, he never manages to stay out of the spotlight for long. Now it transpires that the renegade royal has been reprimanded by a High Court judge for trying to bag ‘trophy targets’ — and has been told that he cannot take phone-hacking allegations against Rupert Murdoch to trial. The pampered Prince’s team claimed at a court hearing in March that Murdoch, owner of News Group Newspapers (NGN), was aware of unlawful activity taking place at his media outlets as far back as 2004. The allegations made against Murdoch suggest the media mogul ‘turned a blind eye’ to reports while he oversaw a ‘culture of impunity’.