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
Rishi Sunak’s Budget has been greeted fairly favourably. The Chancellor has succeeded in avoiding sparking uproar on the Tory backbenches. And Labour’s response was muted. But not everyone is happy. Step forward Caroline Lucas. The Green party MP, beamed in to the Commons from Brighton (where else?), found a fatal flaw in Sunak’s announcement: ‘I
Gorgeous George, the born-again Unionist north of the border, has had a revelation. In order to knock the SNP down a peg at the May elections, the Caledonian firebrand is going to have to do something that goes against every fibre of his socialist being. George Galloway is voting Tory. Once he was teaming up with Jeremy
After the government published emails showing it continued a doomed legal fight with Alex Salmond despite warnings from their own lawyers that they would likely lose, Nicola Sturgeon is facing calls to resign. While the Scottish Conservatives are calling for a no-confidence vote in the First Minister, an SNP spokesperson has hit back – saying
Today – after the deputy First Minister John Swinney was threatened with a no-confidence vote in the Scottish Parliament – the SNP finally agreed to release its legal advice from Alex Salmond’s challenge against the government. Mr S can see why Nicola Sturgeon wanted to keep the advice hidden… The documents concern Salmond’s successful legal challenge
It seems it’s a costly business putting together a historical report. In fact, it took two researchers and a grand total of £18,481 to compile Historic England’s slavery audit. The document — which lists any English pub, church or village hall that might have some connection to the transatlantic slave trade — reportedly caused much frustration among ministers for
After a year of intermittent lockdowns, many Britons have spent too long looking at the walls of their flat and have started to consider an interior upgrade. So, who can blame the Prime Minister’s fiancé Carrie Symonds for thinking similar? The Daily Mail reports that Symonds has recently completed an extensive makeover of the Downing
The New York Times seems to have developed a strange view of Britain in recent years – or at least since the Brexit vote in 2016. In the NYT’s world, the UK is a desolate place, where locals huddle round bin fires on the streets of London, gnawing on legs of mutton and cavorting in
It’s not the crime, it’s the cover-up: just as Watergate exposed the workings of the Nixon White House the Salmond inquiry is giving the world a glimpse of how the SNP works in Edinburgh. And how the SNP-led committee investigating Nicola Sturgeon is shameless in its determination to rig the system. First, the committee tried not to
The eyes of the world have been on Britain’s vaccination programme in recent months, as the UK government embarked on a dramatic push to get our population inoculated by prioritising first doses. During this time, the naysayers have been plentiful – with some UK commentators and plenty of politicians abroad keen to cast doubt over
For most of the past year, Alex Salmond has been engaged in a vicious and high-profile war against his successor, Nicola Sturgeon, with Salmond suggesting that the Scottish establishment has conspired against him to keep him out of public life and have him jailed. Now it appears that Salmond has been waging war against a
What’s the phrase? Poacher turned gamekeeper? Boris Johnson was once the arch poacher — a journalist at the Telegraph before taking on the editorship of Mr S’s own illustrious publication. Now it seems Mr Johnson has discovered what it feels like to be at the other end of public scrutiny. On a press trip to a south London school,
After Boris Johnson’s Commons speech today outlining the government’s roadmap out of lockdown, he was met with a fiery response from his predecessor as Prime Minister, Theresa May. On behalf of her constituents in Maidenhead, the former PM laid into the government’s plans for the aviation sector, pointing out that simply publishing a review of international
Is being offensive an offence? Some of those at Merseyside police who are tasked with upholding the law think so. Over the weekend, officers from the force posed in front of an electronic billboard telling passers-by that ‘We will not tolerate Hate Crime on any level’. The warning displayed behind the masked officers also told members of the public
Two regular faces have been rather absent from Sky News of late: morning anchor Kay Burley and political editor Beth Rigby. The pair were taken off air – Burley for six months and Rigby for three – after they were accused of breaching social distancing rules at Burley’s birthday bash. So, Mr S was intrigued by
Boris Johnson today hosted a virtual meeting of the G7, with representatives dialling in from around the world to discuss the equitable distribution of vaccine doses. But while the group may claim to represent almost half of the world’s GDP, it’s clear the heads of state are still struggling with Zoom as much as everyone
Boris Johnson was in Wales today visiting a mass vaccination centre – as part of the government’s victory lap after meeting its target of giving 15 million people their first vaccine dose by mid-February. The occasion was perhaps the perfect opportunity to highlight the good work the government has done on vaccines in recent months. The Prime
Oh, how the mighty have fallen. Five years ago, Tony Benn’s former bag carrier was staging the most extraordinary Labour coup, ushering in the disastrous Bennite restoration that was Jeremy Corbyn’s rule. Then he went on to found Momentum — Labour’s party within a party, the vanguard of the proletariat that would keep Labour’s wayward liberal
Boris Johnson may have just hit his target of 15 million vaccines to the top four priority groups two days early but don’t get ahead of yourself and mistake that for success. Just as ministers begin to pat themselves on the back over a rare government success story in the UK’s vaccination programme, the Grauniad
Will they, won’t they? Only yesterday the Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab was saying vaccine passports were ‘under consideration’ — going directly against what Nadim Zahawi said just days before when he ruled out vaccine passports as discriminatory and un-British. Raab was clear that the UK was looking at both domestic and foreign passports: that as well
Only last week, vaccine minister Nadhim Zahawi assured us that the government is not looking at vaccine passports as they would be discriminatory and un-British. So imagine Mr S’s astonishment when Dominic Raab admitted that they are indeed being considered in Britain – for internal and external use. When asked on LBC whether a domestic
