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 the end of another rocky week for Scotland’s First Minister. Humza Yousaf has been dealing with national outrage over the hate crime bill and remains under pressure to sack one of his closest allies in the party over an £11,000 iPad scandal. So Kate Forbes’s latest intervention is the last thing he needs. On
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Richard Tice is on a mission to crack down on ‘defamatory and libellous’ slurs against his party as the election draws closer. First, the Reform UK leader forced the BBC to issue a correction and an apology for using news agency copy that labelled Tice’s party as ‘far right’. Now, he’s got his sights set
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While the polls continue to predict a Labour victory at the next election, it’s not all rosy for Sir Keir Starmer. It transpires that his Labour party is still struggling to make a dent in the public consciousness. When quizzed on the big personalities at the top of the Labour Party, the good people of
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When you’re interviewing an expert, it never hurts to come prepared. But when Al Jazeera journalist Jane Dutton quizzed Douglas Murray on the conflict in the Middle East, the unsuspecting interviewer quickly became the interviewee in a rather humiliating twist… ‘You’ve got to inform your viewers of the facts, and you just misled them,’ Murray
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Just when you think the woke wars can’t get more ridiculous, they do. It transpires that the Diocese of Birmingham is advertising for the role of ‘Anti-Racism Practice Officer (Deconstructing Whiteness)’ to work in a ‘racial justice’ team across churches in the West Midlands for £36,000 a year — and Justin Welby is not happy
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Since she stepped down from her role as First Minister, Nicola Sturgeon has played witness to her party’s extraordinary slump in the polls, months of SNP infighting and her own arrest as part of the ongoing police probe. But, Humza Yousaf insists, his predecessor will still campaign for the SNP in the upcoming general election.
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President Joe Biden has been touring Nevada and Arizona in an attempt to win back disgruntled Hispanic voters. ‘This guy despises Latinos,’ he said, speaking of his adversary Donald Trump, the inevitable Republican nominee. Trump’s response? He posted the following on his Truth Social page: Laugh or scorn all you want. The polls show Trump
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Should we expect a flash sale on Garrick Club memberships? The cabinet secretary Simon Case is the second high-profile figure to have quit the exclusive all-male club just hours after earnestly defending his position. The top mandarin follows MI6 chief Richard Moore out the door. The spy chief told his colleagues that he too planned
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It’s hardly been a week since Lee Anderson defected to the flanks of Reform UK and already the red wall rottweiler is making headlines again. Anderson put Rebecca Knox, chair of Dorset’s fire and rescue authority, on the spot at a Home Affairs Committee meeting today, after she described her own force as ‘institutionally racist’.
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As Labour prepares for power, the party’s leading lights are busy u-turning: not least on their views on Margaret Thatcher. The Iron Lady is Labour’s inspiration du jour, much to the anger of the party’s lefties. First, the shadow chief secretary to the Treasury Darren Jones claimed that Thatcher oversaw a decade of ‘national renewal’.
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Oh dear. As the Conservatives struggle to put the remarks of their biggest donor to bed, the governing party north of the border now has its own racism row to deal with. This week’s pro-indy ‘Scotonomics’ festival is being co-hosted in Dundee by founder Kairin van Sweeden, a former SNP councillor accused of racism last
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At long last, Simon Case has received his hearing date for the UK Covid Inquiry. The most senior civil servant in the country was initially excluded from the Inquiry for health reasons, but now that he’s back and fighting fit, the top mandarin has been told to appear in front of Baroness Hallett on 23
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Another day, another BBC blunder. This time the broadcaster admits that it was wrong to describe Richard Tice’s Reform UK party as ‘far-right’ in a recent news report: In an article about the Liberal Democrats’ spring conference we wrongly described the political party Reform UK as far-right when referring to polling. This sentence was subsequently
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The Rwanda bill was back in the Commons on Monday night as the ping pong between the two chambers continues. The evening became a tad rowdier than expected, however, after one MP decided to exercise some rather vulgar language during the session… One politician shocked his colleagues after he was heard shouting ‘sh***’ during the
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Back to one of Sadiq Khan’s worst mistakes in office: Amy Lamé. The underwhelming ‘night czar’ is in the news again after Khan tried to persuade Londoners that the £120,000-a-year Lamé is worth the money. Speaking to Times Radio this morning, the London mayor was quizzed about the city’s failing nighttime economy. ‘New York is
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The Tory donor racism row has entered its second week, much to the dismay of politicians on all sides of the chamber. Both the Conservatives and Labour have had to face uncomfortable questions on Frank Hester’s remarks about Diane Abbott in the last week. After the Tories were criticised for taking too long to condemn
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Another day, another SNP spat. Humza Yousaf spent the weekend trying to drum up support amongst his core voters for his nationalist party, which is predicted to lose almost half of its Westminster seats to Labour in the general election. The main problem with the First Minister’s message, however, was that it seemed to focus
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In the midst of a new development in the never-ending motorhome saga, Humza Yousaf addressed a rather, er, sparse crowd at the SNP’s ‘national council’ event in Perth today. With a speech that was much longer than it should have been, Yousaf spent most of his time lashing out at the Conservatives. Quelle surprise. ‘We
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The SNP finance saga continues to drag on – but today it’s taken a rather strange turn. Last year, a £110,000 motorhome was seized by police from outside Nicola Sturgeon’s mother-in-law’s house as part of Operation Branchform into the party’s finances. On the same day, Sturgeon’s husband Peter Murrell was arrested, while Sturgeon and the
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Oh dear. Things haven’t quite gone to plan for Liz Truss. (Where have we heard that before?) The former prime minister was hoping to debate her private member’s bill in the Commons this afternoon — but MPs ran out of time. In the same week that puberty blockers were banned for children, Truss’s Health and
