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
The controversy over the appointment of TUC economist Duncan Weldon as Newsnight’s economics correspondent has taken a surreal twist. The former Labour Party adviser appears to have used his blog to deaden the impact of a Sunday paper exposé about his connections with the extreme right. Weldon admits to a ‘brief and misguided flirtation with the ideas of the far right,’ yet
Westminster and Fleet Street are all a flutter about An Unexpected MP: Confessions of a Political Gossip, the memoirs of former Tory MP, Jerry Hayes. It’s a fun, naughty read. As a fellow diarist, Mr S particularly enjoyed Hayes’s tales from his days at Punch. Hayes joined the magazine in the late nineties during its
Gongs all round at the Paddy Power Political Book of the Year Award at the Imax cinema in Waterloo. It was a bumper night for Spectator writers. Congratulations to Charles Moore, who took the top spot for his Thatcher biography, to our regular book reviewer Richard Davenport-Hines, who won Political History of the Year for
The Budget has, in recent years, been more tears than laughter, more pain than gain. Yet the upturn in Britain’s economic fortunes has put the Chancellor, whose ‘5 and 2’ diet has had a dramatic effect on his waistline, in a buoyant mood. Osborne’s wit – famously sharp in private – shone through in public
Game over: Eddie Izzard has cursed the union. The comedian who once championed equal clothing rights has waded into the debate over Scottish independence, to the horror of supporters of the union. You might imagine that we unionists would welcome a celebrity endorsement – even from a c-lister like Izzard. But he has a dreadful track
Mr S takes embargos very seriously. He respects the convention. An embargo is sacred. Yet the news that Anne McIntosh MP is holding a constituency surgery is so momentous that it took every ounce of my integrity not to share it with you before the appointed time this morning. Most ordinary MPs don’t embargo news
Owen Jones has denied that Newsnight’s appointment of former Labour adviser and TUC official Duncan Weldon as economics correspondent is more evidence of ‘left wing bias’ at the BBC. On the contrary, Jones says that complaints about Weldon arise from ‘myths and deception’ and that the ‘BBC is stacked full of right wingers’. Now, now,
For a man who claims to be apathetic about politics, Russell Brand is rather noisy. Not content with guest editing the New Statesman and getting crucified by Jeremy Paxman, all in the name of his revolutionary cause, Brand is now writing a political book. ‘People keep asking me how The Revolution will work?’ ‘We all
Confusion has arisen in the wake of the death of Tony Benn. Benn was the first peer ever to renounce his title after the Peerage Act of 1963. DECC minister Greg Barker saw an opportunity to attack his shadow number Hilary Benn, Tony’s son: Terrific tributes to Tony Benn but interestingly I believe his peerage
‘Facts are sacred’ claim the Guardian, but some facts are evidently more sacred than others. Mr S was amused earlier this week when the Office of National Statistics rebuked the paper for its splash about the soaring number of ‘zero-hour contracts’. You may recall that the paper reported: ‘The scale of the use of zero-hours
Jovial Lib Dem Scottish Secretary Alistair Carmichael addressed lobby journalists over lunch today. Speaking from his experience as the party’s former chief whip, he managed to praise the discipline of his party in the Coalition. But he also recalled a rather tense episode with Chris Huhne refusing to return to the UK to vote: ‘One
Labour says it is tough on welfare policy. And today, the party launched its tough compulsory jobs guarantee funding pledge by looking tough too. Ed Balls, Ed Miliband and Rachel Reeves would have made a stronger Mr Steerpike quail in these hard-hitting outfits.
David Cameron spoke to Barack Obama on the phone last night. That’s pretty difficult to imagine, isn’t it? A man on the phone. Screw up your eyes and furrow your brow all you like: you’ll never quite make that mental leap to imagining what a chap on the phone really does look like. So thank
The Today programme’s early morning audience were roused by a very excited reporter chasing Bono at the Oscars this morning. ‘Bono! BONO!’ he shouted, before the Great Man himself strolled over to offer Radio 4 listeners some, er, unique wisdom. listen to ‘BONO! BONO! on the Today programme’ on Audioboo
Have the Oscar Pistorius defence team been watching The Simpsons? Michell Burger, the opening prosecution witness at the athlete’s murder trial, told the court in South Africa how she woke in the middle of the night to the sound of ‘terrible screams’. Pistorius’ lawyers say the ‘blood curdling’ screams were his and because he was
Whatever happens to David Cameron, he will have some reading material post 2015. Dr Anthony Seldon has announced that he will be writing about the Cameron years, just as he did for the Blair and Brown premierships. Seldon plans to publish two books: The Cameron Effect, written with Dr Mike Finn, and Cameron at 10,
Having been whole-heartedly hacked off during the phone hacking scandal, one assumes that Sir Paul McCartney has always been an advocate of high standards in journalism. Not so. While collecting a gong for songwriting at the NME Awards last night, the former Beatle admitted trying to slip fake stories past the music magazine: ‘One of
Things certainly seemed cosy between Angela Merkel and her favourite ‘naughty nephew’ when David Cameron greeted the German Chancellor in Downing Street earlier. So what on earth was said between that greeting and this sofa moment? I’m happy to welcome Angela Merkel to my Downing St flat, after her excellent address to Parliament. pic.twitter.com/0LoSuIKI0A —
Gobby Janet Street Porter has been silenced – for today at least. She pulled out of this morning’s edition of the BBC’s Daily Politics just two hours before broadcast when she discovered that Louise Mensch was being patched in from New York to take her on. There’s history here. JSP once said that Mrs Mensch resides in
‘The cyber-nat activity is disgraceful. They will trash anyone who disagrees with them. Their intention is to make people keep their heads down. Salmond could stop it, but he doesn’t choose to,’ said Alistair Darling, leader of the Better Together campaign, last month. Supporters of Scottish nationalism have dominated the web for the last five
