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
Politicians have a long history of embarrassing themselves on trips to foreign lands. Boris Yeltsin famously offended his hosts in Ireland in 1994 when he refused to get off his plane at Shannon airport. The Russian president suggested afterwards that he had simply ‘overslept’ – an excuse the Irish Press suggested should be taken with
It’s not been a great week for James Dornan. On Saturday the SNP MSP was forced to apologise (again) for suggesting Lothian Buses’ decision to cancel travel services over anti-social behaviour was linked to St Patrick’s Day, with the implication that the company blamed Catholics for the problem. Then on Wednesday Mr S showed the lengths the Hate-Finder General
We don’t hear much of Laura Pidcock these days. The onetime Corbynista rising star was unceremoniously dumped by her North West Durham constituency at the last election, having managed to turn it from a Labour safe seat into a Tory gain in just over two years. Denied a voice in Parliament and with media appearances
It’s been a bad week for marriages in Westminster. First the revelation of Matt Hancock’s affair with adviser, friend and Pinterest lover Gina Coladangelo led to the ex-Health Secretary splitting from wife Martha. And now today, the minister for the Cabinet Office Michael Gove has revealed he and his wife Sarah Vine are divorcing after
Labour’s Kim Leadbeater may be celebrating her triumph in Batley and Spen (though not as much as her leader Keir Starmer) but the by-election was another setback for George Galloway’s efforts to get back into parliament — any parliament. The serial candidate hasn’t been an MP since 2015 and Batley was the 15th time he has
After a long and often unpleasant campaign, the Batley and Spen by-election is over, with Labour managing to cling on to the seat. Labour’s candidate, Kim Leadbeater, won a paper-thin majority of 323 votes over the Tory candidate, with George Galloway trailing around 5,000 votes behind Labour. Galloway was certainly not happy with the result
At long last, the bloody, bruising and bitter Batley and Spen by-election is at an end. After eight weeks of campaigning, replete with controversy and allegations of harassment, the results will be finally declared at 5am on Friday morning in this Labour held-seat facing a stiff Tory challenge. If Keir Starmer’s party loses tomorrow it
Yesterday the US comedian Bill Cosby left prison, after the Philadelphia Supreme Court overturned his conviction for sexual assault in 2018. The 83-year-old Cosby had served two years of a three-to-ten-year sentence, before his verdict was overturned on Wednesday because of a ‘process violation’. For a brief moment yesterday though, it appeared that the story
Dilyn may be top dog in Number 10 but these days there’s only breed of choice for the aspiring Tory: a fox red Labrador. Chancellor Rishi Sunak is photographed in today’s newspapers clutching his new eight week old puppy Nova. And while his next door neighbour Boris Johnson has an (appropriately) badly-behaved, chaotic and randy
It’s by-election day in Batley and Spen tomorrow. The only constituency polling done in the West Yorkshire seat suggests that the Tories stand a good chance of grabbing it off Labour, with the intervention of George Galloway threatening to turn the seat blue for the first time since 1997. In recent weeks there has been much commentary
It has been a busy month for Dawn Butler. Whether it’s joining Cameo, backfiring Twitter polls or even being an apparent contender for the Labour leadership, she has rarely kept away from the headlines. In such circumstances, it’s no surprise then that Butler’s services have at last been recognised, with the MP herself excitedly tweeting how
Much ink has been spilled over the shenanigans of the James Dornan, SNP MSP and amateur Hate-Finder General. Just last week the gaffe-prone Glaswegian was forced to apologise for suggesting that an Edinburgh bus company had stopped services on St Patrick’s Day because of ‘anti-Irish racism,’ an unsubstantiated claim for which Dornan had no evidence. Now fresh evidence
The Prime Minister has never been much of a football fan. Unlike David Cameron, who could never remember if he supported Aston Villa or West Ham, Boris Johnson has remained resolutely ambivalent on the subject of personal preferences by opting to choose, err, no side in the English Football League. Tonight Johnson showed his patriotic
Since her election to Parliament in December 2019, Labour backbencher Kate Osborne has become something of a transparency campaigner. The Jarrow MP has urged the extension of Freedom of Information laws to cover private companies and criticised Conservative opponent Nadine Dorries for sharing ‘fake news propaganda’ online. But Osborne seems less keen to divulge information
It appears the Liberal Democrats have fallen foul of the Trade Descriptions Act. During the Brexit years, the party did its best to eschew the ‘democratic’ part of their name by promising to nullify the largest democratic mandate the UK has ever seen. And now Mr Steerpike is intrigued to see that party grandees don’t seem too keen
A heart-warming moment at the first day of Wimbledon today. In the crowd to watch matches on centre court was Professor Sarah Gilbert who developed the Oxford/AstraZeneca vaccine for coronavirus. Having spent much of 2020 working on finding a jab, the scientist was today enjoying a rare day out, having been appointed a Dame in the Birthday Honours earlier this month for
One man’s loss is another man’s gain. Matt Hancock’s downfall has meant the return of Sajid Javid, restored to Cabinet sixteen months after his resignation in a Downing Street power struggle. Javid wasted no time in taking to the airwaves yesterday, paying the obligatory tribute to his disgraced predecessor and telling broadcasters: ‘We are still in a
Efforts to rid Huawei from Britain’s 5G mobile network were a constant feature of Tory politics last year. The question of whether a company with links to the Chinese state should be involved in such sensitive infrastructure dominated much of 2020, culminating in Oliver Dowden’s announcement in November of a ban on Huawei in 5G networks. It followed a long-running campaign by
A belated effort is underway to salvage the remains of Matt Hancock’s reputation. The latest line, repeated by a dutiful Brandon Lewis on Sky this morning, is that the former Health Secretary quit for the good of the country – which begs the question as to why he waited 48 hours after the news broke
Sixth time’s the charm for Sajid Javid who takes up the health brief following Matt Hancock’s resignation. Javid, who has previously run the housing, business, culture, Treasury and home affairs departments, resigned from Boris Johnson’s government in February last year, following a power struggle with No. 10. The former Deutsche Bank executive quit after being
