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
Last night’s Public Affairs News awards in Whitehall was, as usual, an orgy of back-slapping and smooching for the lobbying industry. Mr S chuckled when the compere for the evening, Kevin Maguire, had to hand over an award to the Taxpayers’ Alliance – a bête noire of the Mirror’s tribune of the people. Maguire never misses the
Attentive Spectator readers will recall Leah McClaren’s takedown of Rob Ford, the…err…shall we say embattled Mayor of Toronto. At the time, Ford was busy denying reports that he had smoked crack; allegations he has since accepted, saying that he sparked up while in a ‘drunken stupor’ – as you do. Ford faces new allegations following the
It could have all gone very, very wrong for Prince Charles on the day he reached retirement age. The Prince of Wales has not even started the job he was born to do, yet as part of his training he is in India ahead of his officially deputising for the Queen as Head of the Commonwealth.
The Sunday Sport, that esteemed paper of record, has replied to Ed Miliband in the matter of Ralph Miliband killing a kitten with a bicycle during WW2, which Miliband described while accepting one of our Parliamentarian of the Year awards last week. The paper says: ‘A WIDOW whose beloved pet kitten was KILLED by the
Lord Ashcroft is writing a biography of David Cameron, which can’t have pleased the prime minister: the pair fell out, spectacularly, after the 2010 election. Ashcroft has announced that the book is expected ‘in the second half of 2015’. He has achieved the significant coup of convincing Sunday Times Political Editor Isabel Oakeshott to step
John Bercow has opened a new front in his war with Tory MPs: he has apparently withdrawn the very fine Speaker Bercow’s Whisky from the gift shop in Parliament. The £30 10 year old single malt was a favourite Tory tipple, and not only for the amusement of joke toasts to Bercow but because it was
Our Parliamentarian of the Year awards continue to makes the news. I’m reliably informed that this item in Dominic Lawson’s Mail column is the result of a jolly exchange at last Thursday’s lunch: ‘There are two television programmes which I watch regularly: Newsnight and University Challenge — both presented by Jeremy Paxman. But which Jeremy Paxman?
Ed Miliband stole the show at this year’s Spectator Parliamentarian of the Year awards. The Labour leader, who won a new prize called Political Speech of the Year (for the energy freeze pledge, which ‘transformed his fortunes’), took the chance to read out a Sunday Sport story which accused his ‘Belgian communist’ father of ‘killing
The court of Ed has a new hero. Francois Hollande, who was credited with ‘turning the tide’ of austerity by taking a ‘different way forward’, has been usurped by Bill de Blasio, the Democrat Mayor-elect of New York, who Team Ed credit with a ‘different kind’ of politics. Ed’s greybeard Lord Wood has penned a
Parents who have taken their little angels to see Father Christmas in his grotto at Selfridges got a shock: he’s not there this year. No lists, no photos on the knee, no overpriced gift. Uproar has ensued. The store’s PR team tells Mr Steerpike: ‘Selfridges will not be having the traditional Santa’s Grotto this year.
TV pranksters Don’t Panic accosted the prime minister, and presented him with a ‘Bullingdon Year Book’. Watch how he reacts… a flash of gauche temper reminiscent of his predecessor.
You know how it is. You’ve had a heavy night, everyone has left your party and empty bottles are all that remains. Then those pesky diary journalists start calling. Elizabeth Murdoch’s husband Matthew Freud has ‘clarified’ that Cameron and Osborne were actually at his birthday party on Saturday, as described by Mr Steerpike yesterday. Initially, Mr
It was PR guru Matthew Freud’s 50th birthday on Saturday: he and his wife, Elisabeth Murdoch, hosted a fairly lavish party. But would Westminster’s finest attend? Guests were struck to see the Prime Minister and the Chancellor both in attendance, evidently quite happy to rejoin the social set that they have both kept clear of
All change over at High Street Ken this afternoon with the departure of Sebastian Shakespeare, who had edited the Evening Standard’s Londoner’s Diary for the better part of 20 years. Famed for his long-running feuds with Lord Archer, Ian McEwan and the Candy Brothers, Shakespeare once had manure dumped on his head as he sat in
Boy-band super-hero Harry Styles proclaimed on Twitter earlier today: ‘All social change comes from the passion of individuals.’ His shrieking fans were enthused by this insight. Some even asked if they could quote him in their exams. How sweet. Mr S is pleased to see little Harry channelling American anthropologist Margaret Mead. She is alleged to have said (although I can’t discover
Sky News made history today by broadcasting for the first time ever from inside the Court of Appeal, and Counsel for the Appellant looked familiar. Indeed, it was none other than Alexander Cameron QC, the Prime Minister’s brother. Dave’s florid face evidently runs in the family; but, while the PM is prone to getting rather
Congratulations to Mr and Mrs Treasury. HMT has today announced the appointment of Sharon White, the current Director General over at Horseguards, as Second Permanent Secretary. Who she? Well, she’s none other than the wife of Robert Chote, the chief of the Office of Budget Responsibility. The OBR was set up in 2010 by George
Readers will recall the sad demise of Tatler Alan, the cute pooch who came to a sticky end in a tragic accident involving the doors of Vogue House, where the magazine is based. Well, I am the bearer of happier news this time: the girls in pearls have a new canine recruit, Geoffrey, a puppy
Former Foreign Secretary Jack Straw was on today’s Daily Politics, gushing with pride that his son Will is Labour’s prospective parliamentary candidate for the seat of Rossendale and Darwen in Lancashire. Yet it seems that this piece of dynastic info was news to Auntie. Will Straw was on the BBC News Channel this morning, discussing energy prices, and there
‘ello, ‘ello, ‘ello. What’s all this, then? The Police Federation has been trying to distance itself from the three coppers who who were hauled before Parliament last week to explain why the secret recording of their meeting with former chief whip Andrew Mitchell bore little relation to their account of events. As PR Week puts
