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
Oh dear. It’s not been the best of weeks for Commons Speaker Lindsay Hoyle. First, there was the debacle over the Standards Commissioner all of last week. Then Hoyle’s plans to review existing standards procedures leaked on Sunday – something no doubt of deep embarrassment to the Speaker, in light of his constant criticisms of ministers
International espionage: what a glamorous life it all must seem. You join the service, hoping to match wits with Her Majesty’s foes, full of dreams of Bond-like action sequences and Le Carré-esque intrigue. And instead you end up having to write to Labour MPs, begging them to stop sending you so many irrelevant letters for their own political
‘Après moi, le déluge.’ Owen Paterson may be gone but Boris Johnson is still feeling his presence. This afternoon the Commons gathered for an emergency debate on the debacle of last week, with opposition MPs queuing up to (metaphorically) give the Prime Minister a damn good kicking. Within five minutes the first ‘tinpot dictator’ taunt
Labour has been raising much hue and cry over the Owen Paterson debacle. The party’s MPs have lined up to attack the Tories for taking second jobs, with some pointing to the last Labour manifesto, which declared that ‘we will stop MPs from taking second paid jobs, with limited exemptions to maintain professional registrations like nursing.’
Is it political to support Black Lives Matter? Not according to No. 10’s most senior security adviser. Stephen Lovegrove (he/him) was until March this year the top civil servant in the Ministry of Defence, before being promoted to national security adviser in Downing Street. During an MoD staff call in June last year, Lovegrove stated supporting BLM
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.
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,
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 –
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
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,
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
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
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
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
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
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
Like her aquatic namesake, Nicola Sturgeon is a long-lived but slippery creature. The Scottish First Minister has seized on COP26 as a chance to push her separatist agenda — conveniently forgetting the fact it was the UK government which won the UN summit bid and selected Glasgow as host city. Just yesterday, she was relishing the
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
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
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