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
Let me tell you a story, dear reader. It is about a land – a quasi-dictatorial kingdom no less – where locals huddle round bin fires on the streets of the great metropolis, gnawing on legs of mutton and cavorting in swamps. Once there was good government, but a plebiscite some years ago brought with it autocracy, plague and a
It was Enoch Powell who once called the whips’ office ‘the sewers of parliament’. But it seems that – much like the aforementioned disciplinarians – the sewers themselves aren’t up to much these days. For word reaches Mr S of a problem with the parliamentary plumbing system that are driving MPs around the (U) bend.
All eyes tonight will be on Rishi Sunak when he addresses the annual Lord Mayor’s Banquet. The Prime Minister is expected to give his first major speech on foreign policy in which he will pledge to treat Britain’s adversaries in Beijing and Moscow with ‘robust pragmatism.’ Such talk is likely to be read in the
Things are looking up for the Labour party. They’re twenty points ahead in the polls, the Tories are squabbling over planning reform and just last week Keir Starmer won Politician of the Year at the annual Spectator Parliamentarian Awards. Still – as anyone within the Leader’s Office will tell you – they’re keen to avoid
Is the BBC trying to mend its ways? Word reaches Mr S that John McAndrew – the former head honcho of GB News – is returning to Broadcasting House as the Corporation’s new Director of News Programmes. The TV veteran boasts more than a quarter of a century of experience in news and current affairs
The Lying-in-State of Her Majesty the Queen was widely hailed in September as a triumph. The organisation was slick, the tributes were moving, the crowds respectful and the queue deftly managed. But it seems that the otherwise flawless ceremony had one misstep: the impact of all those thousands of visitors on the floor of Westminster
All of Westminster was glued to their screens on Sunday tonight to watch the final of I’m A Celebrity. For three weeks, SW1’s finest have watched Matt Hancock – the Casanova of the Commons – battle heroically against endless jungle-based challenges. The onetime Health Secretary has been covered in creepy-crawlies and subject to public opprobrium
Will the last Conservative MP please turn out the lights? In recent days both Will Wragg, 34, and Chloe Smith, 40, have announced they will be quitting the Commons at the next election. And now Dehenna Davison – the Red Wall poster girl of the 2019 election – has become the eighth (and youngest) Tory
Perhaps the most cathartic moment of The Spectator’s Parliamentarian of the Year awards was when the relatively quiet former PM Theresa May had a pop at the not-so-quiet Piers Morgan. Picking up her award for Speech of the Year, May did acknowledge her weak reputation as a rhetorician. But she got Piers where it hurts:
If there’s an upside to spending tens of thousands of pounds – as Boris Johnson did – in doing up his Downing Street flat, it’s surely that such a costly renovation will stand the test of time. Unfortunately the £88,000 makeover at No.11, masterminded by A-list interior designer Lulu Lytle, appears to have already seen
What a year in politics it has been. 2022 has seen five Education Secretaries, four Chancellors, three Prime Ministers but there is only one Spectator and so it was no surprise to see some of Westminster’s most familiar faces descend on London’s Rosewood Hotel. Ministers and their opposite numbers tonight enjoyed the chance to break
He’s back! Denied power at home, Boris Johnson grabs headlines abroad. The Etonian elephant is currently marauding around Europe, firing off quotes with the force of a Maxim gun. Speaking to CNN Portugal on Monday, Johnson discussed a veritably smorgasbord of issues: Partygate, the mini-Budget and his abortive brief-lived comeback. But it was his reflections
Owen Paterson – there’s a name Mr S hasn’t heard in a while. It was just over a year ago that the former Environment Secretary became embroiled in the infamous lobbying scandal which led to his resignation, the North Shropshire by-election and the beginning of the end of Boris Johnson. But now, after a year
Oh dear. The nationalists are at it again. In the past 48 hours, two examples have shown how –despite being Scotland’s main governing party for the past 15 years – old habits die hard in the SNP, where protest and grievance are the de facto response to any minor irritation. First, consider the BBC News
What a year it’s been for Jeremy Hunt. Just four months ago, he was running to be Tory leader on a platform of lower taxes. Back then he was urging his party to cancel Rishi Sunak’s planned rise in corporation tax and instead reduce the rate from 19 per cent to 15 per cent. Now of
The Autumn Statement was truly awful: no rabbits, no silver linings and no growth. But amid the many groups suffering this Christmas, spare a thought for high-earners — those much-despised but ever-necessary wealth creators. The 45p top rate of tax now applies to anyone earning over £125,140, with fiscal drag pulling many more in. The
Much was made of Ian ‘beefy’ Botham’s ennoblement in 2020. The hero of Headingley was the headline announcement of the 36 new peers created in Boris Johnson’s dissolution honours’ list; a year later he received another bauble as a UK trade ambassador to Australia. The then Trade Secretary Liz Truss claimed he would ‘bat for business
Oh dear. It seems that the Scarlet Pimpernel of politics is at it again. Chris Bryant likes to portray himself as the sleazebuster-in-chief, fearlessly standing up for standards in public life. But in his haste to hold his fellow politicos to account, it seems that Bryant has blundered in his eagerness for retweets. Steerpike’s colleague
The World Cup is just three days away and as Westminster prepares to watch the big event, some in SW1 will have a better knowledge than others about the Gulf state. The host nation is expected to spend up to £138 billion on hosting the tournament, with fortunes lavished on new stadia hotels, roads, public
Boris Johnson hasn’t always enjoyed the best relationship with Rupert Murdoch’s titles, having once been sacked as a Times trainee for fabricating quotes. But relations between the former Tory leader and the Sun king himself have been cordial for much of the past decade. And evidence for that is found in the newly updated register