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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A rich irony today at the ‘Restitch’ conference. A pro-Palestine protestor was forcibly removed from the stage as she attempted to derail Security Minister Tom Tugendhat’s speech with questions about Israel — at Restitch, ‘The Social Fabric Summit’. What better example of how ragged the community cloth of Britain has become, eh? The conference saw
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The Queen of Privacy is doing it again. After a brief hiatus from the spotlight, the Duchess of Sussex has appointed a PR guru to help resurrect her UK image. Mr S isn’t all that surprised the Sussexes are setting their sights back on Britain — they were, after all, dubbed ‘Hollywood’s biggest losers’ at
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As the dust begins to settle on Jeremy Hunt’s Budget plans, there’s one Tory MP who won’t be quite as keen to see the papers move on. Science Secretary Michelle Donelan is coming under increasing scrutiny after it emerged that not only had she got her facts wrong and lost a libel case — she’s
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Another one bites the dust. Theresa May has today become the 60th Tory MP to announce she is standing down at the next election – and easily the most high-profile. The Maidenhead backbencher, who served as prime minister from 2016 to 2019, generously gave the scoop to her local newspaper. In a statement, she told
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In a few hours, Joe Biden will deliver what could be his final State of the Union address as President. And the man who hopes to make that happen in November was quick to get his side of the story in first, releasing a ‘prebuttal’ before Biden even appeared in the Senate. Donald Trump blasted
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It looks like more bad press is headed Michelle Donelan’s way. The Science and Tech Secretary had to issue a humiliating apology on Tuesday and retract false accusations she made about an academic after not checking her facts properly. It also transpires that Donelan received legal advice about tweeting her letter of complaint before she made
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Jeremy Hunt is facing a day of reckoning after announcing the Budget on Wednesday. The Chancellor framed his statement as a tax-cutting package, but has faced considerable blowback for taxing by stealth. He was even dubbed the ‘fiscal drag queen’ on the Radio 4’s Today programme – watch out Ru Paul. This was no election-winning Budget There’s
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If Jeremy Hunt didn’t have enough on his hands with post-Budget tensions rising within his own party, he’s now got the wrath of Dominic Cummings to contend with. Not long after the Chancellor announced the Spring budget, Cummings took to Twitter to issue some timely reminders… If [Boris Johnson] had stuck to the deal…you’d be
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Jeremy Hunt failed to raise many laughs with his Budget gags – but his quips went down particularly badly with Labour’s deputy leader Angela Rayner. After picking on Keir Starmer with a rather crude jibe at his weight, Hunt then turned the guns on Rayner, who has recently been reported to the taxman over allegations
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The News Agents podcast has had a mixed reception in the UK but its presenters are having an even rougher ride in the US. Host Emily Maitlis ambushed Republican Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene at Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago residence on ‘Super Tuesday’ to get her reaction to Trump’s victory. Asking first about the Republican party’s message
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Will a UAE-backed entity buy the Telegraph and The Spectator? Not if parliament gets its way. More than 100 MPs have signed a letter saying that this should not happen, demanding a veto on foreign states taking over British titles. Former Housing Secretary Robert Jenrick, who organised the letter, told this morning’s Today programme: We believe that freedom of the press is
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This week, a Syrian man named Omar Badreddin was sentenced to 18 years in prison, after being found guilty of five counts of rape and violent disorder. Badreddin, along with his brother and two other men, were part of a grooming gang that abused girls between the ages of 12 and 14. Newcastle Crown Court
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It’s Budget day today. With the tax burden predicted to amount to 37 per cent of national income by the next election, the 2019 to 2024 parliament is set to go down as the biggest tax-raising parliament in modern times. A rather impressive feat for a Tory party that likes to paint itself as one
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Another day, another government figure in a spot of bother. Michelle Donelan, Science and Technology Secretary, has today had to retract false accusations she made about an academic and agreed to pay the damages and costs. It’s a rather embarrassing case of the science minister unable to get her facts right: sub-optimal to say the
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What a week for TV broadcasters: it’s been non-stop breaking news about, um, themselves. After BBC Verify’s debacle yesterday, it’s TalkTV that is making headlines today. The television channel, launched to much fanfare in 2022, is moving entirely online from this summer. Staff were informed by email on Tuesday, just a month after the channel’s
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Following an ill-timed interview with the BBC, Londoners have been reminded of the existence of the capital’s underwhelming ‘night czar.’ Amy Lamé has a claim to being Sadiq Khan’s worst mistake in office, having presided over a disastrous decline in London’s nightlife since taking up the post in 2016. Since then, her pay has been hiked
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They say opposites attract but the battle brewing between Nigel Farage and Jeremy Corbyn is evidence to the contrary. The pair have become embroiled in a war of words and now Jezza has got the long arm of the law involved. Last night Corbyn took to Twitter to announce that he was planning to sue
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If you thought the Rwanda Bill was a headache last year, 2024 is shaping up to be no different. Rishi Sunak’s flagship legislation was debated in the House of Lords on Monday night and the government suffered no less than five defeats at the hands of the unelected chamber. While the amendments are likely to be
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He’s back. George Galloway, victor of Friday’s Rochdale by-election, has this afternoon been sworn in as MP in the House of Commons for his fourth different constituency. After a morning swanning around the estate, ‘Gorgeous George’, who last sat in 2015, arrived to a rather empty chamber, flanked by Alba MP Neale Hanvey and Father
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There’s rarely a day now that the blundering BBC isn’t the news itself. This time the spotlight is back on BBC Verify, the Corporation’s much-lauded fact-checking service launched to combat the scourge of fake news. Yet journalist David Collier has done some digging and has suggested that BBC Verify looks to be falling short of