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
Throughout the coronavirus crisis, the UK government has insisted that its decisions and policies have been led by the scientific advice on the virus. It’s a commitment that has allowed the government to convince the public that drastic interventions to stop the disease have been necessary. But, equally, there have been criticisms in some quarters
Priti Patel was in the Commons today, to be asked about the policing of the recent Black Lives Matter protests across the country. And, it was an understatement to say that the Home Secretary was taking no prisoners when it came to accusations from Labour that she or the government did not understand racism in this country.
Yesterday, protestors at a Black Lives Matter demo in London vandalised the statue of Winston Churchill which stands in Parliament Square. The protestors spray painted Churchill’s stone plinth so it read ‘Churchill was a racist’ and sellotaped a Black Lives Matter sign to the former prime minister – the man who led Britain against the
Another day, another BBC apology. But Mr S isn’t convinced this one is actually needed. The BBC’s new boss was announced this morning and it fell to the corporation’s media editor Amol Rajan to fill in viewers about who Tim Davie is. Rajan explained Davie had a ‘hellishly, hellishly difficult job’ in manning the ship over the next
After the New York Times published an op-ed written by Republican Sen. Tom Cotton – calling for the military to be deployed in the face of nationwide protests – the editors are facing a staff revolt. Reporters at the paper have been quick to take to social media to denounce their own publication. Mr S was
It was the plot-twist in the Covid drama nobody expected. At the start of the pandemic, Good Morning Britain host Piers Morgan quickly became the self-appointed Robespierre of the lockdown movement. Anyone who broke the rules, or did not support tighter restrictions, was in his eyes a killer, responsible for untold deaths as the virus
Last week, the BBC show Newsnight found itself in hot water, after its presenter Emily Maitlis was rebuked by the BBC for not showing due impartiality, when she opened the show with a broadside against Dominic Cummings and Boris Johnson. You would think, therefore, that the programme would be on its best behaviour at the
Equalities minister Kemi Badenoch was having none of it in the Commons chamber this morning. SNP MP Alison Thewliss asked the minister about the ‘no recourse to public funds’ policy, which Boris Johnson was quizzed over at the liaison committee last week. Safe to say, Badenoch wasn’t particularly happy with the line of questioning, accusing Thewliss of ‘confected outrage’
It was not a very good morning on Good Morning Britain. Former New York mayor Rudy Giuliani did an interview with Piers Morgan, and to say it did not go well is a major understatement. After some initial back-and-forth between Giuliani and Morgan, the conversation descended into a shouting match between Morgan and Rudy about guns, violence
Was Boris Johnson wearing an earpiece during PMQs? Of course not. But that didn’t stop some of those who should know better suggesting otherwise. Former media editor of the Times Raymond Snoddy shared a claim that ‘it seems entirely possible the PM is in fact having radio prompts to attempt to make him appear competent’.
MPs tried out Jacob Rees-Mogg’s new voting system for the first time today, as they prepared for a return to the House of Commons and the end of the virtual voting system. The reforms have already proven controversial among MPs, who have complained that the new system will involve long queues, will take at least
Today the House of Commons fully opened its doors to MPs again for the first time since the beginning of the coronavirus outbreak. Members were summoned back to Westminster so they could vote on new proposals to end the ‘hybrid system’, where politicians were able to Zoom into debates and vote remotely. From tomorrow, MPs
Last month, Mr S did a little digging into Matt Hancock’s claims that he managed to reach 100,000 tests a day – finding that Health Secretary had been fudging his figures by including tests that had merely been posted rather than just tests that had actually been completed. The expert verdict is now in, with the UK
Last month, Mr Steerpike wrote about the worrying decision by YouTube to remove a video featuring Karol Sikora, a professor of medicine, from its platform. Sikora appeared to have been targeted because he believed that coronavirus was petering out, and that we could potentially learn from Sweden which did not lockdown to protect itself against
Tomorrow MPs will swap dodgy internet connections and politics by Zoom for a real life journey into the House of Commons. Under government orders, MPs who can are to return to Parliament, as part of the government’s drive to encourage those who cannot work from home to travel to the office. For one group of MPs though, the
The Newsnight team were rapped on the knuckles by the BBC yesterday, after presenter Emily Maitlis opened Tuesday’s show with a monologue saying Dominic Cummings had broken the rules with his lockdown trip to Durham. The corporation ruled that the introduction ‘did not meet our standards of due impartiality’. Safe to say, those working on
Today, Boris Johnson was grilled by MPs on the Liaison committee, which is made up of select committee chairs. The Prime Minister was asked about a range of topics in the marathon session, including about his adviser Dominic Cummings’s trip to Durham during lockdown. But while the Prime Minister seemed to survive arguably the trickiest
Emily Maitlis opened Newsnight last night with a monologue in which she declared that Dominic Cummings broke the rules and the country shocked that the government cannot see this: ‘Good evening, Dominic Cummings broke the rules. The country can see that and it’s shocked the Government cannot. The longer minister and the Prime Minister tell us he worked within
Dominic Cummings doesn’t have a huge number of supporters in the newspapers this morning, but Michael Gove is doing his best to defend the PM’s chief aide. Asked by LBC’s Nick Ferrari whether he would, like Cummings, go on a sixty-mile trip to test his eyesight, Gove suggested he would do, before abruptly changing tack: Gove:
On Monday evening, Dominic Cummings held a press conference in the Downing Street Rose Garden to try and explain why he had travelled the 250 miles to Durham from London during the lockdown. The senior adviser also explained why he had kept his location in Durham a secret at the time. Cummings said that he