Steerpike

Steerpike

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

Qatari cash splashed on jet-setting MPs

Case rates are falling, booster rates are sky-rocketing and Westminster is consumed by the Owen Paterson affair: what more signs are needed that normal life is resuming? And more proof, if needed, was provided by this week’s release of the updated Members’ Register of Interest, in which under-fire MPs revealed that jet-setting junkets have now resumed. 

John Major attacks Boris Johnson (again)

Shock! Horror! Sir John Major has attacked Boris Johnson! In a breathlessly reported appearance on the Today programme, the former Tory PM lambasted his successor for his ‘shameful’ handling of the Owen Paterson row, denouncing Johnson’s behaviour as ‘politically corrupt’ and ‘damaging at home and to our reputation overseas.’ Pretty strong stuff. Or it would be,

MPs in the dark about Beijing’s threats

Following the killing of Sir David Amess, there has been much discussion in recent weeks about the safety of elected representatives. But while the public conversation has largely focused on radicalised loners, constituency surgeries and online abuse, Steerpike fears that the commentariat have overlooked the dangers still posed by hostile nation states to parliamentarians here in Westminster –

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Six of the worst Zarah Sultana moments

It’s not been a great week for MPs covering themselves in glory. But amid all the malarkey over Owen Paterson and Claudia Webbe, one of their colleagues was embarrassing themselves in a more traditional way: the car-crash television interview. Step forward, Zarah Sultana, whose antics on Wednesday’s Politics Live went somewhat under the radar in light

Claudia Webbe given suspended jail sentence

Well there we are then. Claudia Webbe, the MP for Leicester East, has this afternoon been sentenced to a suspended 10-week jail sentence and 200 hours’ community service for threatening to throw acid at a friend of her boyfriend and send naked pictures of the victim to her family.   Webbe, who was convicted of harassment last month,

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COP’s awkward reliance on coal

It’s day four of COP26 and while the big names have already departed, the speeches carry on. This morning some 190 countries and organisations announced their ‘clear commitments’ to phase out coal power. The new ‘Global coal to clean power transition statement‘ requires signatory states to end all investment in new coal power generation domestically and internationally

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Insulate Britain block insulation truck

Oh dear. It appears that the UK’s little-loved eco-warriors have managed to cover themselves in glory yet again. Insulate Britain – the protest group surely working as double agents for Big Oil – have today decided to block off Parliament Square, causing yet more misery and frustration among commuters at rush hour.  Insulate Britain’s sole demand

Why is the Ministry of Defence so useless?

A new Commons report is out today and it does not make for happy reading. The Ministry of Defence’s (MoD) system of procurement is ‘broken’ with billions of taxpayers’ money wasted, according to a cross party committee of MPs. The Public Accounts Committee (PAC) judges that out of the MoD’s 20 largest projects, 13 were running

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It’s Green on Greenpeace at green conference

It’s some time since Steerpike last checked on the Scottish Greens, the minor party in Holyrood’s little-loved coalition government. The indy-loving eco-warriors celebrated their best results in May’s parliamentary elections before quickly resuming their favoured role as SNP enablers-in-chief, taking up ministerial roles as their price to keep Nicola Sturgeon in Bute House.  A not-so magnificent seven

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Meghan and Harry pledge to save the world

In Glasgow the green games are well underway, with a roll call of world leaders reading from the COPacabana hymn sheet to a genuflecting press corps. British premier Boris Johnson claims it’s ‘one minute to midnight,’ Prince Charles believes ‘time has literally run out’ while UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres argues ‘we are digging our own graves.’ Cheery stuff.  And

Ursula von der Leyen’s climate hypocrisy

Looking down today’s batting order at the COP26 summit, Steerpike’s eye alighted on the name of Ursula von der Leyen. A failed German defence minister, kicked upstairs to her current post of President of the European Commission: who better to save the world than a superannuated Eurocrat?   And, with exquisite timing, the Daily Telegraph has

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Rocketman Bezos’s galactic hypocrisy

It appears that COP26 are running out of the big guns to wheel into Glasgow. Already David Attenborough, Prince Charles and Boris Johnson have delivered their warnings, with Greta Thunberg boycotting outside and the Queen resting in Windsor. Who better than to take to the stage on day two of the UN climate change summit

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Six of the most melodramatic warnings from COP26

The COP26 summit in Glasgow reaches its climax today, as world leaders try and thrash out a deal to halt climate change. But as well as attempting to find agreement, politicians and other bigwigs are competing to outdo each other in their dire warnings of what might happen if nothing changes. Here are six of

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The great Greta rebrand

Steerpike is no prude but even he has been surprised by some of the blue language from green activists at COP. Temperatures are running high outside the official conference zone, where angel-faced iconoclast Greta Thunberg has been leading protestors in a chorus of ‘You can shove your climate crisis up your arse’ and telling her devoted followers

Watch: Sleepy Joe can’t keep his eyes open

That didn’t take long. It’s less than four hours since America’s septuagenarian president landed in Scotland and already he appears to have fallen asleep at the summit. Joe Biden was spotted shutting his eyes during one of the many, many speeches this afternoon, not opening them again until an awkward apparatchik ran over to disturb him.

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CNN’s COP capital confusion

American network CNN appears to be bringing the same rigour and insight to COP26 that it displayed throughout the Trump administration. The broadcasters rocked up to the UN climate change summit in Scotland this weekend, brimming with their usual brio and bumptiousness at the chance to cover Biden, Boris et al rubbing shoulders. There’s only one problem

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COP commences with chaos

‘COP26: no time for delay’ scream the signs at Euston station. But for hundreds of desperate delegates yesterday it proved to be a cruel irony after dozens of rail services to Glasgow were cancelled thanks to a fallen tree and severe weather sparked rail chaos. Members of HM lobby took to their WhatsApp group to complain

COP kicks off with another eco-quandary

At long last, COP26 is finally here. Tomorrow, the world’s largest eco-jamboree will begin in Glasgow, with some 20,000 to 25,000 delegates expected to attend. For Alok Sharma et al, it must have felt at times that the ‘last chance’ to save the Earth was being damned by the gods themselves, with strikes, pestilence and

The tragic embarrassment of Sir Nick Clegg

If you thought Nick Clegg’s career reached its nadir with the ‘I’m sorry’ video then think again. The former Deputy Prime Minister is re-enacting the stunning success of his political career out in Silicon Valley where he’s paid £2.7 million a year to sell his soul to Mark Zuckerberg, Sheryl Sandberg and the rest of the Facebook