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
The No. 10 media operation has become notorious for releasing announcements late on a Friday night when most hacks have already filed their stories. Now it seems Labour is learning from the masters of the dark arts, having finally pulled off a successful media strategy – revealing the resignation of its most senior communications official
Following this morning’s shock by-election result, gloom and despair are gripping much of the Conservative party in the South of England. But one ex-Tory Cabinet minister was in brighter spirits today, with former Attorney General Dominic Grieve popping up on BBC News to explain why his onetime colleague turned Brexit nemesis Boris Johnson is to blame
They say you should keep your friends close and your enemies even closer. If that’s the case, there must be an awful lot of people who are close to the health secretary, Matt Hancock. Hancock has not had the best of weeks. On Wednesday, Dominic Cummings released a series of WhatsApps which appeared to show
Last month’s Queen Speech was noteworthy for how little it contained, with the only rabbit out of the legislative hat being (appropriately enough) the Animal Sentience Bill. But now the proposed legislation, which would give vertebrates a legal right to feel happiness and suffering, has started to attract serious scrutiny as it enters the committee stage of
Political rhetoric is fairly blunt in the west of Scotland but it seems one SNP councillor has gone too far. Tony Gurney, who represents the Nationalists on North Ayrshire Council, has been hauled over the coals for using a four-letter word: Tory. At last week’s council meeting, Tory — sorry, Conservative — councillor Todd Ferguson
Few MPs in the House of Commons have been as eloquent on either side of the lockdown argument as Charles Walker. The MP for Broxbourne returned to the chamber yesterday afternoon to take aim at the scientists sitting on Sage — the government’s Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies. Walker — who has accused Boris Johnson of treating
Just minutes before Prime Ministers’ Questions, Dominic Cummings did what he does best: fire off another salvo in one of his long-running feuds. The former chief special adviser took to Substack to hurl another 7,249 word grenade at his onetime Tory colleagues and while it’s the screenshots of Boris Johnson calling the testing situation ‘totally fucking
Since his eight hour long testimony to a joint select committee last month Dominic Cummings has been unusually quiet. The Vote Leave maestro has declined interview requests after levelling a litany of accusations at Boris Johnson and his government, leaving Matt Hancock and others to defend their record in various studios and parliamentary appearances. Now though he has
Members of the Supreme Court have had something of a wary relationship with ministers in recent years. Since the landmark Gina Miller verdict in January 2017 and then the unanimous prorogation case in September 2019, there have been various Tory rumblings in Westminster about moves to abolish, reform or simply rename the highest court in the land.
It appears there was a nasty atmosphere down on Whitehall yesterday, where an anti-lockdown demonstration took place. Footage has emerged today of the BBC Newsnight presenter Nick Watt being pursued by an unpleasant mob at the event, with a group screaming at the journalist and calling him a ‘traitor’. Eventually, Watt was forced to run
After resigning as a visiting professor at City University in March after admitting to supporting IRA terrorists in the 1970s, Roy Greenslade has now popped up again in the institute’s student magazine XCITY. In an interview with budding hacks, published this month, the former Guardian media commentator claims that ‘given that it was more than 20 years since the
The Speaker was not holding back this afternoon when asked by Sir Edward Leigh about Boris Johnson’s 6 p.m. Covid press conference. Lindsay Hoyle laid into the government from the Speaker’s chair, accusing ministers of disrespecting parliament for failing to inform the House first of all changes to Covid restrictions. Indeed he even claimed that
Lord Sumption was one of the starring guests on last night’s launch of GB News. The former judge, who stepped down from the Supreme Court in 2018, has enjoyed a varied career as one of Britain’s best paid barristers, a medieval historian and even as Keith Joseph’s onetime adviser but has emerged in recent months as
It’s private members’ bill week in Parliament, with lucky backbenchers who won a place in the ballot presenting their proposed laws to the Commons on Wednesday. Labour MP Barry Gardiner, who spent 24 hours in the party’s leadership race last year, is up and planning a bill to outlaw ‘fire and rehire’ tactics used by some employers to drive down pay
At long last GB News is here. After months of speculation and excitement, the first national TV channel to launch in 21 years finally launched at 8 p.m. on Sunday night with chairman Andrew Neil appropriately being the first to speak on air. He subsequently introduced various GB News stars ranging from archaeologist Neil Oliver
It has been a difficult 2021 for the British shellfish industry. Since the end of the Brexit transition period, fishermen have had to contend with new rules which mean that live mussels, cockles, oysters and other shellfish caught in most of the UK’s waters are no longer allowed to enter the EU. Legal action against the
Having pledged to ‘level up’ the country during the last election, it seems that CCHQ are determined to practice what they preach. With Treasury civil servants set to move next year across the country to a new campus at Darlington, party apparatchiks in Tory central office are following suit. Party co-chair Amanda Milling announced plans for a new hub
Tala Halawa, the BBC journalist who was found to have tweeted ‘Hitler was right’, is out at the Corporation. Almost three weeks ago, Steerpike highlighted how media watchdog organisation Honest Reporting and others had uncovered a string of tweets posted on Halawa’s Twitter account from 2014. These included pronouncing that ‘Israel is more Nazi than Hitler’ and
This morning saw the G7 summit formally kick off in Cornwall with a traditional awkward ‘family photo’ of the different premiers and presidents together. As Boris Johnson led the leaders off the stage, he turned around to be confronted with an unsettling sight: french president Emmanuel Macon clasping the septuagenarian Joe Biden to his bosom. With one
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