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
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
Is Downing Street planning to sue for a story suggesting that Boris Johnson has ‘buyers’ remorse’ over his marriage? That’s the question asked at today’s lobby meeting after the New European ran a story alleging that the Prime Minister had said this at a Telegraph leader writers’ reunion at the Garrick Club. The original story met
Well, it’s official: Britain is facing a mass migration crisis. On a trip to Washington Priti Patel used the term yesterday as she turned her guns from the French to the EU’s system of open borders instead as ‘they do not have border controls and border checks’. She told reporters there: There is a mass migration
As the race for the Elysée hots up, presidential candidates are busy courting voters and raising funds. And with Macron’s poll ratings flatlining in Paris, all eyes are on Eric Zemmour, the right-wing talkshow host who is still yet to declare but is nevertheless third in the polls. So Mr S was intrigued to learn that Zemmour
Cricketer Azeem Rafiq shocked the political word on Tuesday with his revelations about the abuse he suffered while a young player at Yorkshire Cricket Club. But Mr S has now been sent social media posts which show Rafiq himself was no stranger to using racist language when young, with a leaked message revealing the former
Taxes are rising, inflation is climbing, sleaze is everywhere and the Tories are divided. With Labour ahead in the polls for the first time since January, can anything stop the party’s return to power? Enter Zarah Sultana, Coventry’s answer to Citizen Smith. The baby-faced bolshevik – designed in a CCHQ lab as a walking Tory recruitment advert