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
Supporters of Brexit are often accused by their political opponents of having an unhealthy obsession with the past, and wanting to take the country back to an age when the British Empire spanned a quarter of the globe. But, if the Liberal Democrat conference is anything to go by, it appears to Mr S that it
So far, things have gone very smoothly for Jo Swinson since she was elected leader of the Liberal Democrats. The party has managed to increase its numbers in parliament and coalesced around a new hardline Remain position of revoking Article 50. Yet, there were signs today that all is not well with some Liberal Democrat
It’s only been four days since John Bercow announced that he will retire as Speaker of the House of Commons, yet it seems that the bellicose MP is showing no sign that he’ll spend the rest of his tenure keeping quiet, or defending the impartiality of his role. Last night, the Speaker had a break
Oh dear. Boris Johnson’s decision to withdraw the whip from the Tory Brexit rebels continues to send ripples through Westminster. While Chief Whip Mark Spencer has laid out the appeals process to the rebels, many of their colleagues remain unhappy about the decision to remove them from the party. Now things have taken a turn
This afternoon, Lib Dem MPs gathered outside a freshly vacated parliament in a defiant attempt to bag a photo opportunity of them looking stern. The impromptu press conference came after the Court of Session in Scotland declared Boris’s decision to prorogue parliament ‘unlawful’ earlier this morning. Nevermind the fact that the case, having already been
It was announced last night that the government’s recently appointed ‘anti-Semitism tsar’ John Mann would be given a seat in the House of Lords. Mann resigned the Labour whip over the weekend after 18 years as an MP, blasting his former leader as unfit to govern following the party’s risible attempts to remove anti-Jewish members.
Early this morning at around 2am, the Commons witnessed some of the most extraordinary behaviour seen in the Chamber in living memory, as MPs attempted to protest the prorogation of parliament. Below are the strangest moments from the morning: 1. Labour MPs attempted to stop the Speaker John Bercow from leaving his seat as he was called
Now that John Bercow has announced his imminent departure, an inevitable political bun fight will surely follow. The outgoing Speaker told colleagues that he would be stepping down from his post by 31 October, the day the UK is supposed to leave the European Union. The move comes after the Business Secretary Andrea Leadsom told
David Cameron notably came under fire from all quarters when his Resignation Honours list was released in 2016. The former PM’s attempt to dole out knighthoods and honours to his nearests, dearests and even hair stylist, was roundly condemned as the ultimate example of Westminster cronyism. None though were more offended at the time than his
In a long, winding, and emotional speech in the Chamber this afternoon, John Bercow informed MPs that he would be resigning his position as Speaker of the House of Commons by 1 November. Bercow promised to either resign at the end of the parliamentary session if MPs backed the government’s plan for a general election,
As the Labour party currently decides whether it wants to fight a general election, many observers are still trying to work out (three years after the referendum) what the party’s actual Brexit policy is. Does Labour want to Remain? Does it want to fight a second referendum? And if there is a second referendum, what
On Tuesday, the former Conservative MP Rory Stewart won GQ’s Politician of the Year award. It was probably the best part of the week for Stewart, who has had the Conservative whip removed and been roundly mocked after posting a series of photographs on Twitter, in which his typical grinning selfie smile disappeared when he was next
Boris Johnson was dealt a bitter blow this morning. Not only did the Prime Minister suffer his first ministerial resignation, a mere 43 days in to his premiership, but it was his own brother Jo who wielded the dagger. The former universities minister, who signed up to Boris’s government in July, dramatically announced his resignation
Jeremy Corbyn backtracked on one of his core political messages yesterday, when he told Boris Johnson that he no longer wants a general election. The Labour leader is now briefing that his MPs will not vote for an election until a bill has been passed blocking a no-deal Brexit. Is this not quite the U-turn
In a dramatic move earlier this evening, the MP Phillip Lee crossed the House of Commons floor to join the Liberal Democrats, in protest at Boris Johnson’s Brexit strategy. The MP, who represents Bracknell (a constituency that voted Leave in 2016), blasted the government in a statement for ‘using political manipulation, bullying and lies’ to
Dr Phillip Lee, the MP for Bracknell, has left the Conservative party to join the Liberal Democrats. In the middle of Boris Johnson’s statement to the House of Commons this afternoon, the ex-minister crossed the floor to sit beside the Liberal Democrat leader, Jo Swinson. In a statement coinciding with his dramatic defection, Lee blasted
When Boris Johnson announced that Tory MPs who rebelled against the government this week to stop a no-deal Brexit would be deselected at the next election, the prime minister was clearly hoping that the raised stakes would deter at least some of his colleagues from rebelling. This morning though, it seems that the threat has
It’s all out war in the Conservative party this morning, after the former Tory Prime Minister John Major announced that he was joining a legal action (started by the Remain campaigner Gina Miller) which will argue that Boris Johnson’s prorogation of parliament was unlawful. In his statement Major grandly stated that: ‘I promised to that,
There were howls of outrage yesterday when Boris Johnson announced that he was calling for a Queen’s Speech on 14 October, and suspending parliament for several weeks beforehand. MPs, Remainer commentators and even the Speaker of the House of Commons chimed in to label the move a ‘constitutional outrage’, and accused the government of politicising
Last night, hundreds of people gathered in Parliament Square to vent their fury at Boris Johnson and his decision to prorogue parliament for several weeks in September. The crowd were in a raucous mood, but none were in finer spirits that the left-wing journalist Paul Mason. In a video published online, Mason could be seen (with