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
All this talk from Labour and the Liberal Democrats about who will be their next party leader appears to have got to the Tory camp. Although the dust is yet to settle following David Cameron’s surprise Conservative majority in the election, Mensch couldn’t help but offer her prediction for who the next Tory Prime Minister will be, when
With 190 women elected last week and the number of ethnic minority MPs hitting record levels, Parliament is slowly beginning to look a little bit like modern Britain. Settling in, one male MP, proudly wearing a green new members’ badge, was sitting on the Terrace on his first night in the Commons. He proceeded to
Chuka Umunna has surprised many today with the news that he has withdrawn from the race for the Labour leadership. Explaining his decision he said that the ‘added level of pressure’ had not been a ‘comfortable experience’. Mr S can already hear the sighs from the many Chuka supporters who had seen him as the man to
Although Labour’s celebrity endorsements from Martin Freeman, Robert Webb and Russell Brand did little to help the party in the election, Norman Lamb will be hoping his new backer will help him win the Liberal Democrats leadership contest. Dappy, the N-Dubz singer, has come out as backing Lamb to be the next leader of the Liberal Democrats:
On Monday when 56 SNP MPs descended on Westminster, the youngest of the new intake Mhairi Black gushed that everyone had been so nice. Two days in, and cross-party relations have begun to cool. Carol Monaghan, the MP for Glasgow North West, claims that Simon Burns, the Tory MP for Chelmsford, scolded her as well as her fellow SNP politicians for
Although the palace has played down concerns regarding the publication of Prince Charles’s ‘black spider’ memos to Government departments, given that they have spent nearly a decade fighting against their publication it can be presumed that the prince is not happy about the situation. Not that the Prince of Wales wishes to let his feelings
There were some dangerous pledges made in the heat of the election battle from both politicians and pundits. Paddy Ashdown promised to eat his hat should the exit poll prediction bear out. It did, and he has not consumed his hat, though he did go halfway and consume a hat-shaped cake. A similarly rash exit poll
Ed Miliband’s spin doctor Tom Baldwin has been rather quiet since Labour’s disastrous election night results. Now the former Times journalist has explained his radio silence in an article for the Guardian. He says he has been avoiding the news after the Tories had ‘a win they did not fully expect or really deserve’. However, the appointment
After Jeremy Clarkson was sacked from Top Gear, his fellow presenters James May and Richard Hammond resigned in protest. Since then, the trio have been spotted together over the past few weeks having ‘secret talks’ about their futures, with the pair reportedly visiting the home of ITV director Peter Fincham. Now Mr S hears that with talks
To appoint one Equalities Minister who voted against gay marriage looked sloppy, to do it twice looks frankly strange. Yet that is what the Prime Minister has just done. Education Secretary Nicky Morgan voted against same sex marriage in July 2013, though she claims she has subsequently changed her mind. Caroline Dinenage, the Gosport MP, who has
Ahead of the arrival of 56 SNP MPs in Westminster yesterday, Alex Salmond offered his new colleagues some advice in a recent interview. He said: ‘Make your voice heard, represent your constituents, and stay out the Strangers Bar’. So far, so good. In fact, Salmond will no doubt be glad to hear that his fellow MPs have taken his advice and stayed
David Cameron has never been hugely popular with the right-wing fringe of the Conservative Party, yet they tolerated him as long as they thought he was going to win. And win he did. At Monday’s jubilant 1922 Committee meeting, Tory MPs were shocked to see Bill Cash – a key figure of the so called
When Liam Byrne departed from the role of chief secretary to the Treasury in 2010, he left a note for his successor which read that ‘there is no money’. The note went on to haunt the Labour party throughout their unsuccessful election campaign, with Byrne recently describing it as ‘the letter I will regret for ever’. Happily, Danny Alexander hasn’t
Mr S previously reported that there were plans to donate the Guardian‘s election sweepstake to a foodbank. The decision was made after the organisers assumed that none of their employees could have possibly correctly guessed that there would be a Conservative majority. Now, word reaches Steerpike that the matter didn’t stop there. In fact, one employee at Guardian HQ was so bold
Warning: The SNP revolution has begun in Westminster. This afternoon Nicola Sturgeon arrived at parliament with her 56 newly elected SNP MPs in tow. However, despite talk of discord between the Scots and English, Mr S is assured that so far relations are remarkably civil. Mhairi Black, the 20-year-old student who ousted Labour’s Douglas Alexander from
While cases of Moët & Chandon champagne have been photographed making their way to Downing Street in previous years, the new government appears to have developed finer tastes. Sean Clare, a BBC producer, reports that a delivery of Bollinger champagne – the favoured tipple in of Patsy in the BBC’s Absolutely Fabulous – has arrived at Number Ten Downing
Seemingly missing the democratic process that returned a Tory government with a majority and an increased share of the vote, the hard left took to the streets of Westminster over the weekend to protest against austerity. However, has ‘austerity’ really hurt all of the protesters who took part? Look closely at the box one used to make their
After David Cameron won a surprise Conservative majority in the general election, angry anti-austerity protesters gathered near Parliament Square today to let their outrage be known. During the demonstration, a war memorial, honouring the women of the Second World War, was vandalised with ‘F— tory scum’ graffiti. While the crime was greeted with outrage by both the left and right, Laurie
Given that staff at the BBC have been providing rolling election coverage, it’s understandable that they may be rather tired. Even so, Mr S was surprised to see that BBC veteran Huw Edwards described an SNP MP and Nicola Sturgeon as Scotland’s power couple. Speaking over footage of Sturgeon walking alongside Patrick Grady, the recently appointed SNP MP for Glasgow North, Edwards
In 1992 the Sun claimed it was them ‘wot won it’, fast forward to the next time the Tories achieved a majority and an editor of a different paper is claiming ‘victory’: FROM: Sarah Sands TO: ES ALL (editorial) SENT: Fri 08/05/2015 10:16 SUBJECT: Congratulations Well done everyone on our superbly professional election coverage. It