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
With the BBC set to make a formal announcement about Jeremy Paxman’s replacement at Newsnight imminently, tweets from BBC staff revealing the news were hurriedly deleted. Not quite all of them, though. Evan Davis to join #newsnight following the departure of Jeremy Paxman. — Lucy Walker (@lucybellewalker) July 21, 2014 It’s Evan Davis, apparently.
Mr S was sipping his breakfast tea when he saw this plea from deposed Cabinet minister Owen Paterson: I’m looking for someone to run my new office, but I seem to have lost Dominic Cummings’s phone number. Can anyone help? — Owen Paterson MP (@Owen_PatersonMP) July 21, 2014 Cameroons need not apply.
The other darling of the CLA Game Fair — alongside former Environment Secretary Owen Paterson — was Charlie Brooks (aka Mr Rebekah Wade), who appears to be back on the country scene in a big way. ‘I’m a big fan of Boris Johnson and Nigel Farage’, the former litigant tells me. ‘I’ve always been a convert to
Sacked Environment Secretary Owen Paterson was the darling of the CLA Game Fair at Blenheim Palace today. A steady trickle of well wishers queued, as if at a wake, to shake the right-winger’s hand. Even Nigel Farage publicly endorsed O-Patz, and was almost upstaged by the grey man. Country folk are sharpening their pitchforks in
Talk radio station LBC are coy about the prospect of a Michael Gove phone-in show, mooted by Mr S yesterday. When asked if such a show is on the cards, a spokesman said: ‘We enjoy Michael Gove appearing on LBC, as we do the many other politicians who also enjoy getting the opportunity to talk to LBC’s
There’s something wonderfully ironic about a Labour party that boasts about decency in politics yet has a frontbencher who tweets things like this: Bravo to Helen Goodman, Labour’s Shadow Culture, Media and Sport Minister, who would be furiously demanding an apology from the Conservatives for a similar tweet.
Well, Michael Gove’s wife, Sarah Vine, has made her views clear: tweeting that the reshuffle was ‘a shabby day’s work which Cameron will live to regret’. Crikey. Talk about ‘stand by your man’: A shabby day’s work which Cameron will live to regret http://t.co/M9SN100PE1 via @MailOnline — Sarah Vine (@SarahVine) July 16, 2014 Should Vine be
Some big egos are set to join David Cameron’s rubber-stamping Cabinet meetings, which will make life interesting. There is a physical problem, too. Mr S makes it 11 ministers awarded the right to attend (in addition to the 22 full Cabinet ministers) — and the reshuffle is not even complete yet. Sue Cameron reported during
The Speaker’s House hosted the launch of ‘Women in Parliament’, a cross-party initiative to get more women into parliament, today. Fittingly, there was barely a man in sight — besides wee John Bercow, obviously. ‘Women in Parliament’ is led from by Mary MacLeod — former PPS to ex-Culture Secretary Maria Miller, who is also closely
The BBC has departments devoted to pronouncing dialect and names; but they must have been in management meetings this morning, leaving news presenter Joanna Gosling to struggle with the name Tulisa Contostavlos: ‘We’ll just leave it at Tulisa,’ said the tongue-tied presenter. The Spectator sympathises with Ms Gosling: try pronouncing Taki’s name.
Taking sides in the Middle East causes rows over many a Sunday lunch table; but one imagines that things are even tenser when you’re a member of one of the most prominent Jewish families in history and you’ve converted to Islam. This is the world in which Jemima Khan lives. Ben Goldsmith expressed a few
Mr S likes a flutter. His eyes were drawn to the latest speculation about Boris’s return to the Commons. Ladbrokes are offering 3-1 that the Blond Bombshell will be selected in Uxbridge, which is to be vacated by John Randall at the next election. Uxbridge is hardly K&C (Mrs S is agin it); but, it
Ed Miliband’s negotiations with the White House to meet his hero Barack Obama aren’t going well, Nick Robinson reported on the Today programme this morning: ‘Ed Miliband’s team are desperate not to ruin their man’s chances of a visit to the White House by talking them up… The Labour leader’s aides point out that he
‘Hypocrisy of the stars who shielded cash from taxman’, cries a headline in today’s Daily Mail. But are we sure that it’s really hypocrisy? Among those ‘outed’ as hypocrites is the actor Michael Caine. But Mr Steerpike seems to recall that the cockney lad has been a vocal campaigner against our tax system, which seem to
Earlier this year, a ‘government source’ floated the idea that Sebastian Coe could well be appointed the next chairman of the BBC Trust. It’s no secret that George Osborne and Seb Coe go back a long way – they both used to work together in William Hague’s private office. And while Osborne has never officially
In 1975 Margaret Thatcher said in her ‘Free Society’ speech to the Conservative Party Conference: ‘Some Socialists seem to believe that people should be numbers in a state computer. We believe they should be individuals. We are all unequal. No one, thank heavens, is like anyone else, however much the Socialists may pretend otherwise. We
‘I’m like any parent,’ says Nick Clegg (Deputy Prime Minister, privy councillor and universally derided leader of the Liberal Democrats). Speaking to the Radio Times, as any old parent might do, Average Dad Nick pleaded with his offspring: ‘The first, most visceral instinct you have as a parent is you want to protect your children, and politics is
Labour Party guru David Axelrod popped up in Sunday’s New York Times, presumably to promote his new book. He spoke candidly to columnist Maureen Dowd, attempting to explain why Barack Obama is plummeting in the polls: ‘Reagan significantly changed the trajectory of the country for better and worse. But he restored a sense of clarity. Bush and
Mr S would like to draw your attention to two separate articles in the Guardian, which he passes on without so much as a smirk. The actor and comedian Steve Coogan, told the paper in 2011 that he would never let Rupert Murdoch forget the News of the Word hacking scandal: ‘[They are hoping] there
Chuka Umunna was on the receiving end of an internet storm after he suggested that people who vote UKIP are either too old or too stupid to do things like ‘sending and receiving an email, browsing the internet, filling in an online form.’ Angry E-Kippers flooded the Shadow Business Secretary’s inbox with proof to the