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 an unlikely face off: the First Minister of Scotland Humza Yousaf against Twitter/X chief Elon Musk. The pair are currently engaged in an online spat after Musk labelled Yousaf a ‘racist’. There’s never a dull moment with him at least… The row came about last night after Musk saw a clip of a parliamentary
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He’s back! Since the Privileges Committee probe earlier this year, Boris Johnson has been unusually quiet by his colourful standards. But today the former Prime Minister has hit the headlines once more today with the announcement that he is going to be joining GB News as a ‘presenter, programme maker and commentator’. According to a
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Has Patrick Harvie woken up on the wrong side of the bed? On BBC Scotland this morning, the co-leader of the Scottish Greens appeared to take aim at just about anybody he could think of — including his own coalition government. Lashing out at the Scottish nationalists, Harvie slammed their council tax freeze. The Greens
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What comes around, goes around. The SNP government has never been slow in condemning the Tories for a lack of transparency in the ongoing UK Covid Inquiry. So it was to Steerpike’s amusement then that Humza Yousaf and his Scottish government are now facing criticism for not handing their key messages over to that same probe. Talk
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Imitation may be the highest form of flattery, but has Rachel Reeves taken that too far? The Financial Times today reports that the shadow chancellor’s new book ‘has been found to contain examples of apparent plagiarism,’ including ‘reproduced material’ from sources such as Wikipedia, the Guardian and, er, Reeves’s own front bench colleague Hilary Benn. The FT claims to
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Oh dear. The world’s wokest media outlet is at it again. When they’re not moralising over artists or misattributing quotes, there’s nothing more the Guardian enjoys then a ritual round of Israel-bashing. A vintage example has been offered up today on its website. Barely a fortnight after more than 1,400 Israelis were butchered by Hamas
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In his eagerness to stand with Israel, it seems Sir Keir might have slipped up. For a fortnight now Labour has been rowing about his comments in an LBC interview in which Starmer seemed to justify a water and electricity blockade of Gaza. Since then, it’s been damage control galore, amid an exodus of outraged
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Communication is everything in politics, as Labour’s overactive press office knows all too well. Earlier this month, Keir Starmer did an interview on LBC with Nick Ferrari in which the latter asked whether ‘A siege is appropriate? Cutting off power? Cutting off water?’ in Gaza. Starmer replied that ‘I think that Israel does have that
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Oh dear. It seems that another major broadcaster has slipped up in their coverage of Israel and Palestine. This time it is ITV News, which this week featured in a segment ‘a British Palestinian woman living in London’ called Latifa Abouchakra. She was invited on to talk about the Islamophobic abuse she has received in
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It’s a red letter day for Nicola Sturgeon: she’s finally achieved something of lasting value. For the former First Minister has managed to pass her driving test at the precocious age of, er, 53. That’s just one year less than the average life expectancy of some of her male constituents under the SNP-run health service. Impressive
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U-turns are seemingly all the rage right now. When it’s not Labour and the Keirleaders backtracking on policy, it’s the turn of the SNP to pick up the slack. Back in, er, March Humza Yousaf campaigned to lead the SNP on a platform of increased ‘progressive taxation’: the idea that in a cost-of-living crisis he
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Life in London is going swimmingly right now. Whether it’s the lyrical cries for ‘Jihad, jihad, jihad!’ or Tube drivers leading chants of ‘Free, free Palestine!’ you can scarcely avoid the sounds of success these days. So it’s good to know that the capital’s mayor has his priorities in order. Back in May of last
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It’s a tough old time for Rishi Sunak right now. Twenty points behind in the polls, he faces by-election defeats everywhere he looks as well as having to grapple with the ongoing unrest in the Middle East. But as he bids to turn it all around, it seems that the Prime Minister’s task has now
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Oh dear. It seems that the wokest police force in all the West has done it again. In the past fortnight, pro-Palestine marches in London have attracted some unseemly elements to their cause. One such example was offered today at an event for Islamist group Hizb ut-Tahrir in central London. After one speaker asked the
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Oh dear. It seems that not all have taken the by-elections results well. Tories everywhere are waking up to two of the worst defeats in the party’s history but others involved in the campaign have preferred not to stick around. Among them was Andrew Cooper, the defeated Conservative candidate in Tamworth. Moments after losing a
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Ping! An email lands in Steerpike’s inbox. It’s a press release about Labour’s new homes pledge, touted with much fanfare in Liverpool last week. ‘Labour will jump start planning’ it declares, ‘to build 1.5 million homes and save the dream of homeownership.’ The ‘transformational package of reforms’ includes the ‘next generation of “new towns”, new
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The Foreign Office is often called the grandest of all Whitehall’s ministries – so it’s just a shame then that so few mandarins appear to enjoy it. New figures unearthed by Mr S show that less than half its staff were working in King Charles Street at the beginning of this month, despite much talk
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Is it ageist to suggest that an obviously frail 80-year-old might not be well suited to the task of resolving global conflicts? Even a man in his prime would struggle to fly from Washington to Israel, do a frantic day of talks, greet the suffering, make a speech and jet off again hours later to go
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Party conference season is over and now it’s back to school. Ahead of Prime Minister’s Questions today, all eyes were on the former SNP MP Lisa Cameron today as she defected to the Tories. The onetime Nat officially crossed the floor at midday to a hero’s welcome from the Conservative benches. The cheers were so
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It’s all very well judging political parties on their polling figures. But what exactly do voters think about their leaders? Look no further: thanks to Savanta polling for the Scotsman, Mr S has discovered just how negatively the people of Scotland view those vying to be their next First Minister. Bottom of the pile is, shock,
