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
Whether it’s Labour and Plaid in Wales, the SNP and Greens in Scotland or Red Wallers and free-marketeers within Westminster, it’s an interesting time for political alliances at present. But Mr S brings news of a fresh new cross-party effort to raise the eyebrows of even those cynical veterans of the ChangeUK years. Esther McVey
As a former court room, the No. 9 Downing Street briefing hub has seen its fair share of drama – and none more so than this past year. Some £2.9 million was lavished on turning the site into a state-of-the-art stage for press conferences, amid plans to televise government briefings with the parliamentary lobby. But all that
It’s the SNP’s second annual national conference this weekend and already the organ-grinders are turning out their favourite hits. The National – a self-described newspaper in breach of the Trade Descriptions Act – has again combined the stridency of Pravda with the editorial values of the Beano. Adoring coverage of the conference was kicked off with its
All too often, the massed rows behind Nicola Sturgeon at FMQs can resemble a scene from one of Stalin’s party congresses. Row after row of poker-faced nationalists dutifully banging their desks at the latest edict from on high, interjecting occasionally with the latest pre-approved attack line or standard softball question to the Dear Leader: an army
Irony has been declared many times in this pandemic but now, from Covid-riddled Germany comes the final proof: you can’t kill yourself now unless you’ve been vaccinated. As European countries battle to limit the spread of the virus, Verein Sterbehilfe – the German Euthanasia Association – has issued a new directive, declaring it will now only help those who
Bob Crowe may have passed on but his spirit lives on. The militant Marxist’s Rail, Maritime and Transport (RMT) trade union is on a 24-hour strike today in a dispute over changes to drivers’ rotas as Sadiq Khan seeks to bring back the night Tube. Union heavies on the Jubilee, Victoria, Piccadilly, Central and Northern
For months now, Mr S has chronicled the tribulations of Susan Aitken, who is the first SNP leader of Glasgow City Council and appears determined to be the last, too. She has presided over a waste crisis in which refuse-strewn streets have become a familiar sight even in the city’s leafier suburbs and which threatened to
Boris couldn’t make it but fortunately there was one Tory premier at last night’s Spectator parliamentarian awards. Former Prime Minister Theresa May appeared to be having the time of her life at the star-studded bash, rocking a fabulous blue number and waltzing up on stage to win Backbencher of the Year to the strains of
After eighteen months of Covid, it was with a sense of relief and joy that MPs, peers, bag-carriers and hangers-on descended on London’s Rosewood Hotel. After all the twists and turns of the pandemic’s politics, ministers and opposite numbers enjoyed the chance to break bread and hear from some of Parliament’s leading figures collecting gongs
‘Enough’, said Gary Neville this week as he (once again) attacked Boris Johnson. The ex-footballer is no stranger to attacking the Tories: in the past few months, the former England right-back has dubbed Johnson a ‘liar’, bizarrely suggested that the PM is a ‘spaghetti bolognese of a man’ and accused the Government of ‘incompetency’. Neville is clearly a busy man: as well
Ping! No, not the dreaded Covid app but rather another beseeching email from CCHQ, begging money for Tory funds. Reading through the party-politicking, Mr S was curious to see that among the party’s list of achievements was the claim that ‘we’re delivering what the British people voted for’ by ‘cutting taxes for hardworking people.’ An
Throughout the pandemic, Sadiq Khan has been positively evangelical on face-coverings. The Mayor of London has waxed lyrical about their virtues throughout the pandemic, declaring that: ‘my mask protects you, your mask protects me’ that ‘if we don’t wear masks, the virus will spread further’ and calling such face-coverings ‘the most unselfish thing you can do.’ Ahead
‘China Spy Blitz’ blared the Sun this morning: ‘UK spooks hiring Mandarin speakers in cyber war.’ Spy bosses, the paper reports, are embarking on a recruitment drive, directed at people who speak the language or have grown up within a multilingual family, with MI5, MI6 and GCHQ all increasingly wary about a moment of reckoning
It’s been some months since Mr S last reported on the antics of James Dornan, the SNP MSP and amateur Hate-Finder General. The gaffe-prone Glaswegian managed, in the space of just one week, to get himself embroiled in multiple minor scandals after accusing an Edinburgh bus company had stopped services on St Patrick’s Day because
Oh dear. Boris Johnson’s much-trailed speech to the Confederation of British Industry has caused something of a social media storm – but not for the reasons the Prime Minister will have wanted. In a confused, shambling performance, the Tory premier lost his place repeatedly throughout the speech and spent three minutes riffing on his family
Fear and unease have stalked the corridors of Northcliffe House since the announcement last Wednesday of Geordie Greig’s defenestration as editor of the Daily Mail. A ‘funereal’ atmosphere has lingered over the paper’s staff ever since, with nervy hacks fearing the return of expletive-riddled editorial explosions associated with Greig’s predecessor Paul Dacre. There’s also considerable
Mr S has been in his fair share of dodgy disco hot-spots but few captured his heart like Klute, the much-loved, much-hated Durham nightclub for generations of local students. With its sticky floors, cheesy tunes and lashings of cheap liquor, it’s no surprise FHM christened the Marmite establishment ‘the second worst nightclub in Europe.’ Klute
Tennis is in the news again and this time it’s not Emma Raducanu’s prodigious feats making the headlines. Chinese sensation Peng Shuai, a onetime Wimbledon doubles champion, has gone missing a fortnight after accusing a former top party official of forcing her to have sex after playing tennis at his home. Unlike the craven apparatchiks of the International Olympic
So farewell then Geordie Greig. The Daily Mail editor is leaving his post this week after just three years in the role, following an internal power struggle at Associated Newspapers. The supremely connected Old Etonian addressed the troops late this afternoon in the Northcliffe House newsroom, with many sharing in the ‘funereal’ atmosphere that greeted
A new poll was released yesterday showing 50 per cent of Americans don’t think President Biden is in good health. Turns out: they are right, with the country’s oldest ever Commander-in-Chief today forced to transfer power to his deputy while he is under anesthesia getting a colonoscopy. That means, for a ‘brief period of time’ the leader