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
Making his way home from Westminster the other night, Mr S was intrigued to see a new series of eye-catching posters on the Tube. ‘Staring’, it screamed ‘Intrusive staring is a form of sexual harassment and will not be tolerated.’ It’s part of an ongoing campaign by Sadiq Khan’s Transport for London (TfL) to get commuters to behave better:
Poor David Cameron has had a tough few years since leaving No. 10. Few of his post-premiership ventures seem to be doing well. First there was the collapse of Greensill capital; then his enforced resignation from Afiniti after the firm’s founder was accused of sexual assault. There’s also the flatlining performance of his flagship legacy project,
The recent turmoil in the Tory party has only been surpassed by that in Boris Johnson’s No. 10. Various faces have come and gone during the Doctor Who style-regenerations these past three years, from Eddie Lister and Dominic Cummings to Dan Rosenfield and Allegra Stratton. One of Johnson’s four director of communications who fell by the wayside was
Where would we be without Ofgem, eh? Amid soaring energy prices and a cost-of-living crisis, the energy regulator this week unveiled its latest wheeze to help struggling households: updating the energy price cap every three months, rather than six, to try to avoid price shocks. The cap – which is the maximum price per unit that
To Peterborough, ahead of the local Labour party’s annual meeting there tonight. One of the topics of conversation will likely be who to select as Peterborough’s candidate for the next general election. After all, the seat is a marginal one, with a majority of just 2,580. Four different MPs have served as the borough’s representative in
Much like the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster, the post of Information Commissioner is one of those intriguingly named but largely under-explored positions in British public life. Created in 1984, the post brings with it a tidy £200,000 a year salary and an office comprised of more than 500 staff. Its job is to ‘uphold information
Crisis, what crisis? Beset by domestic problems of their own making, the SNP government at Holyrood now has to face a difficult international climate too, amid rising tensions abroad and economic troubles around the globe. So, what better time for the country’s embattled First Minister to duck questions on ferries and sleaze by jetting off to Washington to
Liz Truss loves a good party so it’s perhaps no surprise to read that she supports buying a swanky New York townhouse for British diplomats to entertain VIPs. But the nineteenth century mansion is expected to come at a price – £20 million – at a time when the Foreign Office is desperately looking for ways to
It’s not been a great few months for standards in Westminster. In February, Neil Coyle MP lost the Labour whip after several drunken rants in the House of Commons Strangers’ bar. Then the following month, Mr S was the first to bring news that parliamentary staff were being told to stop sleeping overnight in the House
For a man who likes to present himself as a Jupiter-like statesman, gliding across the world stage, Emmanuel Macron’s efforts at diplomacy have fallen remarkably flat in recent months. While Britain spent the weeks before the Russian invasion of Ukraine shifting weapons to Kyiv – to demonstrable effect now – Macron instead responded to the troop
It seems that Labour’s bid to recapture Wakefield isn’t off to the best of starts. The resignation of Tory MP Imran Ahmad-Khan last month over historic sex offences gave Sir Keir Starmer’s party a chance to take back the seat it lost in 2019 and prove that Labour is on track to make gains in the Red
Rows in Parliament usually occur on the floor of the House of Commons, between opposing members of different sides. But a fresh storm is brewing elsewhere in the chamber, between the journalists who comprise the parliamentary press gallery and the man who occupies the Speakers’ Chair. After the grandstanding of the John Bercow era, Lindsay Hoyle was hailed
Oh dear. It seems that the sainted Sturgeon has slipped up again. Much as Jesus was betrayed by his disciple, so too has the Blessed Nicola been let down by one of her own. In this case, it’s Fergus Ewing – scion of the First Family of Scottish nationalism. The former rural economy secretary stands accused
Boris Johnson has sought to reboot his premiership this week, unveiling a package of eye-catching measures as he tries to calm Tory tensions about last Thursday’s election results. Such efforts though have been somewhat undermined by the announcement of the Metropolitan Police today that another 50 fines have been dished out to Downing Street staff over partygate. Yet
The art of politics is one thing but what about the politics of art? Over in Parliament, MPs have been fussing about what item to hang in the corridors of power to belatedly mark the 2019 general election. But now, at last, those bigwigs who sit on the Speaker’s Advisory Committee on Works of Art have finally come
Junkets are like buses: you wait ages for one to come along and then two do at once. For this month, it’s not just London mayor Sadiq Khan on a transatlantic taxpayer-funded jolly: Scotland’s First Minister Nicola Sturgeon launches her American charm offensive next week too. Good thing that all is going well currently in both parts of
Hurrah! A Scottish Government press release announces, with no small modicum of pride, that it has at last located the mysterious missing documents in the ferries saga. Audit Scotland, the public body which runs the rule over Holyrood’s spending of taxpayers’ money, recently conceded defeat over this matter. It had spent considerable time and effort
To the CPS, the think-tank home of Thatcherite free-thinking. On today’s agenda: a sermon from Frank Luntz, the onetime populist Republican sage now reborn as a crusader for cleaner politics. The master of political vocabulary – responsible for such terms as ‘death tax’ and ‘climate change’ – has seen the light and is in the UK to warn of
Relations between London and Dublin aren’t at their best, given the ongoing war of words about the Northern Irish Protocol. But Mr S was still nevertheless surprised to see that RTE – Ireland’s state broadcaster – has today published a comment piece by a leading academic and Guardian contributor which seriously floats the idea of
It was an unconventional start to the day for Michael Gove this morning. The veteran minister appeared on BBC Breakfast to deny whispers within Whitehall of an ’emergency Budget,’ slapping down such talk by using a bizarre array of accents that ranged from American to Harry Enfield’s infamous ‘Scousers’ impersonation. Gove told listeners across the
