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
On Wednesday it was revealed that 150 Oxford academics are boycotting Oriel College and refusing to teach its students in protest at its decision to keep the Cecil Rhodes statue. Steerpike has been sent a copy of the letter – which sets out the academics’ collective view that ‘Oriel College’s decision not to remove the statue
As the nation waits to hear whether life can finally return to normal come 21 June, world leaders have jetted into Cornwall for the G7 junket in a bid to set the world to rights. Covid-19 and climate change are top of the agenda – but it isn’t all work and no play. Various social meets are
Jeremy Corbyn has spent the past few weeks going on something of a road trip of British universities. Now sitting as an independent for Islington North, Corbyn spoke at the Oxford Union last month where he was asked if he had any regrets about his time as Labour leader to which he replied: ‘Regrets? I’m really with
‘I was thrilled to meet your wife,’ Joe Biden told Boris Johnson during their first meeting at this week’s G7 summit. The PM’s eyes sunk. Where could this be going? ‘Yes, they’ve gone off to do something else,’ Boris replied, seemingly in the hope that Biden would too. The President was in a playful mood though.
In recent months Jacob Rees-Mogg has kept a low profile in Westminster. The leader of the House is kept mainly these days to the confines of managing parliamentary business with the mile-long ‘Mogg conga’ queuing system last June being one of the few occasions he has returned to the limelight. So Mr S was delighted to see the
Happy birthday Lindsay Hoyle. The Speaker of the House was bombarded with such messages today as he celebrated his 64th birthday by granting an urgent question to Yvette Cooper on the accommodation of asylum seekers at Napier Barracks. Last week, six asylum seekers won a legal challenge against the government after a judge ruled that their accommodation
First we were told it would be just 12 weeks to ‘turn the tide’; then it was that the pandemic would be over by September (2020). But now, amid yet more calls to push back the 21 June reopening date, it appears one scientist is happy for the current restrictions of social distancing to continue
Tomorrow Gordon Brown is set to release his latest messianic tome. Grandly titled Seven Ways to Change the World: How to Fix the Most Pressing Issues We Face – presumably from some of the problems he first caused – it is set to be released exactly one week after his successor Ed Miliband published a rival guide: Go
Much has been written about the reported £88,000 Downing Street flat makeover masterminded by A-list interior designer Lulu Lytle. We’re told that the new look boasts ‘Persian rugs, cream walls with gold hangings and gold chandeliers’. There’s talk of ‘gold’ wallpaper (at £840 a roll) so heavy it is now peeling off the walls. But
The end of lockdown and the dawn of summer has seen Westminster’s finest emerge once more in their best cricket whites. On Sunday two lobby teams turned out at Bromley common ground to see Harry Cole’s Chatty Bats face off against Brendan Carlin’s Cincinnati cricket club. The latter eventually triumphed by 48 runs and now have the
Things haven’t exactly been going well for French president Emmanuel Macron in recent days. Earlier this week it was reported that France is launching a doomed bid during its presidency of the EU council to ban the use of English in key meetings in favour of the French language. Now it appears that Macron has problems on
What do John Bercow, Nigel Farage, Iain Dale and Count Binface all have in common? The quartet are among the few British political commentators listed on popular celebrity video app Cameo, where celebrities charge fans to record messages. Now though the quartet has been joined by the first sitting MP to use the app: onetime Corbyn loyalist Dawn Butler.
Tories up and down the country should be celebrating tonight after it was revealed that walking CCHQ advert Zarah Sultana has kept her seat intact in the report by the Boundary Commission. The hard left MP has served as a Conservative recruiting agent since 2019 when the 27-year-old squeaked home in Coventry South by just
It is results day in the House of Commons as nervy MPs wait to find out their future. At long last the Boundary Commission for England has today revealed its conclusions on the future of Westminster constituencies. It is the latest development in a decade-long saga which has previously failed to change the parliamentary map. This
And so the foreign aid rebellion died before it even began. This afternoon Speaker Lindsay Hoyle decided that an audacious move to amend the ARIA bill to keep spending 0.7 per cent of GDP year on international development was not within the scope of the legislation. Despite this Mr S thought it worthwhile to go through the names of
It has not been a good year for gay rights charity Stonewall. Last month founding member Matthew Parris accused the organisation of trying to delegitimise anyone who did not agree with its views after a free speech row at Essex University. Stonewall was alleged to have misrepresented the law in its advice to the institution with barrister Akua Reindorf warning
As culture secretary, Matt Hancock developed a taste for technology, even launching his own eponymous social network in February 2018. But now as health secretary it appears his appetite for big data has grown ever greater. Not content with launching the NHS Covid app as part of a £22 billion test and trace scheme, his latest wheeze is
When the National Health Service was formed in 1948, it had three goals: it would meet the needs of everyone, it would be free at the point of service, and its services would be based on clinical need, not ability to pay – a revolutionary, and ambitious, challenge. Fast forward 73 years though and it
In a sign that nature is truly healing, this afternoon brought reassuring news of a great parliamentary tradition reasserting itself: the House of Lords hereditary by-election. These contests are held every time one of the 92 hereditary peers still in the Upper House die and see the great and the not-so-good vote among themselves to elect
It’s been a tough year in the diary world. Covid has wrecked the usual party circuit of canapés and cocktails, with hard pressed hacks forced to pump their sources for a rapidly diminishing supply of gossip for the past 15 months. Now it appears that not even the legendary Sebastian Shakespeare is safe. Shakespeare, an Oxford