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
Something funny is in the water in Oxfordshire. In recent months councillors there have embarked on a spree of unorthodox eco-measures, no doubt encouraged by the Green party’s gains in local elections. Back in March, TV star Jeremy Clarkson led a protest of farmers, enraged by the County Council’s decision to only provide ‘plant-based’ food
Poor Rishi Sunak. Membership polls put him 30 point behind Liz Truss but there’s still three-and-a-half weeks to go in the Tory leadership race. The former Chancellor is being forced to spend his summer traipsing around the country, trapped in some hideous purgatory, waiting for the sweet release of 5 September to halt the seemingly
Shalom from Manchester, where Liz Truss has visited a synagogue. This being the Tory leadership race though, every visit is a chance for a good bit of self-promotion, with team Truss firing off a press release to mark the occasion. But amid pledges to pursue a free trade deal with Israel and give more support
Oh dear. David Lammy is in hot water yet again. With six figures’ worth of outside interests, it can be hard to keep track of all those extra payments. And now the Shadow Foreign Secretary’s media outings have tripped him up once again, thanks to no less than 16 occasions in which he did not
Kara Kennedy is a young Welsh journalist with a promising career ahead of her. Having graduated with her Master’s in journalism from Cardiff University last year, she has already landed work at the Daily Telegraph and the Express, as well as interning at The Spectator. On Wednesday evening, she tweeted with excitement about her first
It’s the Glorious Twelfth tomorrow and participants are looking forward to an excellent day of shooting. The Countryside Alliance are expecting a bumper supply of grouse, thanks to excellent weather, with the birds doing their best to avoid the guns of the finest shooters in England. One of those who’ll presumably be joining the fray
It can be difficult now to cast one’s mind back to the beginning of last month, when the field for next Tory leader was wide open and an exciting array of candidates were jostling for attention. Among them, of course, was Tom Tugendhat, the great bright hope of the One Nation group. He crashed out
Outriders are all the rage these days in British politics. Liz Truss has Kwasi Kwarteng and Lord Frost: Rishi Sunak has Dominic Raab and Mark Harper. They act to deliver the messages their candidate can’t, launching attacks, fighting fires and speaking home truths. So it’s no surprise then that Gordon Brown, the Giffnock grouch, is
Well, you have to hand it to them. After an outcry, Manchester University has now told Mr S that they’re investigating a PhD student who published a research paper in which he detailed how he masturbated for three months to extreme Japanese comics featuring young boys. The saga started earlier today after Tory MP Neil
Miaow. The claws are out in the Tory leadership race, after Liz Truss took a pop at Nicola Sturgeon. The frontrunner to be the next PM told a Tory hustings last week that the First Minister was an ‘attention-seeker’ who ought to be ‘ignored’ – a judgement that won her plaudits among the party faithful
Boris Johnson is very much the elephant in the room of this leadership race, looming large over both Rishi Sunak and Liz Truss. And much like an intimidating pachyderm, neither candidate seems completely confident how to handle him without being squashed. Sunak’s approach is the simpler one: talk about the defenestrated premier as little as
It’s a tough time for the arts at present. The cost-of-living crunch means institutes scaling back projects and families cutting back their non-essential spending. Still, over at one Britain’s biggest quangos, the good times appear to have kept on rolling. Data published earlier this year reveals how Arts Council England spent more than £100 million
To Darlington, for another of the endless Tory leadership hustings. Last night’s clash covered much of the same old ground but was notable for several swipes which Liz Truss took at the media’s coverage of the race. Asked who was to blame for Boris Johnson’s downfall, several members of the audience interrupted to shout ‘the
A curious row has exploded in the projectile-packed leadership race. This morning’s Yorkshire Post splashed on the news that Rishi Sunak (a Yorkshire MP) would oppose Tory plans for 1,500 asylum seekers being housed in a disused RAF base in the region, ahead of tonight’s Darlington hustings. Yet, just hours later, Defence Secretary Ben Wallace
When it comes to spinning exam results, the Scottish Government gets straight As and a gold star for effort. Pupils in Scotland are receiving their school qualifications today following May’s diet, the first after two pandemic years in which examinations were cancelled and replaced by teacher assessments. Naturally, allowing teachers to mark their own homework
With just four weeks left in No. 10, rumours are swirling about Boris Johnson’s future plans. Will he quit the Commons or face down his critics on the Privileges Committee? Make a mint on the speaking circuit or champion Kyiv’s cause? With debts, costs and childcare bills, one thing’s for sure: Boris’s next job will
Oh dear. It seems that the Hiroo Onodas of Remainia have done it again. Best for Britain, the former Stop Brexit crusade now recast as a self-styled ‘civil style campaign’, is up to their old tricks on Twitter. In their haste to score points off anyone remotely associated with the Leave campaign, BfB has seized
It’s the scoop they were all after. Finally, at last, the much-lambasted Washington press pack has obtained the media equivalent of the holy grail: images of Donald J Trump’s toilet. For months, such shenanigans have exercised the finest minds in American political journalism. Now, Maggie Haberman, the darling of the DC class, has pipped them
After a long period in office, it’s natural for any political party to lose their zeal for governing. As problems mount up, loyalties fray as the stench of sleaze begins to reek. In hushed whispers, MPs begin to talk of a ‘spell in the wilderness’ as opposition looks increasingly attractive compared to the burdens of
Among the many superstitions of the SNP is that the reorienting of Scottish politics around the constitution has been a ‘joyous’ and ‘civic’ affair. Far from pumping bitter political and national sectarianism into the public square, dividing the population into nationalists and Unionists has facilitated a great intellectual contest in the very best spirit of