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 Prime Minister has been generating scores of headlines lately – for all the wrong reasons. It has transpired this week that Sir Keir has accepted over £107,000 worth of gifts since 2019 – the most of any parliamentarian in the same period. Labour has insisted today that voters don’t care about all this carry
While Labour’s dirty laundry over ‘frockgate‘ is being aired in public, it would be easy to forget there are still Tory leadership contests rumbling on in the background. The Scottish race will conclude at the end of the month, but the UK Conservative party leader will only be announced in November – a decision that
Dear oh dear. Things are only getting worse for Sir Keir, as it now transpires that the Prime Minister accepted £40,000 in hospitality gifts, a £4 million donation from a Cayman Islands-registered hedge fund, and regular use of an £18 million penthouse owned by top donor Lord Alli. Alright for some, eh? It’s been a
To Westminster, where more trouble is afoot. It now transpires the Prime Minister is paid less than, er, his own chief of staff. Sue Gray has once again made headlines after the Beeb revealed the former top civil servant has been given a salary of a whopping £170,000 – which is £3,000 more than the
It’s 10 years to the day that those pesky Nats failed to secure independence north of the border – and not much has gone well for the SNP since. The once-formidable duo that was Alex Salmond and Nicola Sturgeon broke down soon after, Salmond was accused of multiple cases of sexual misconduct (of which he
How to solve a problem like Reform? The Tories have been scratching their heads on the matter since their rather disastrous election result in July. And yet it appears that the Conservatives are, er, still pretty split on the best way forward. Former Conservative leader John Major has told the Beeb that a move to
It’s fair to say that the punishment handed out to Huw Edwards has not gone down well. The disgraced BBC newsman was only given a suspended six-month sentence for child abuse image offences, meaning he avoids jail. He will also be placed on the sex offenders’ register for seven years, and undergo rehabilitation. There has been a
Back to the Foreign Secretary, who seems unable to keep himself out of the headlines these days. It transpires that as well as being rather gaffe-prone on the subject of international relations – having described Donald Trump in the past as a ‘neo-Nazi sympathising sociopath’ – David Lammy has today taken it upon himself to
Back to Westminster, where the Prime Minister is facing some rather uncomfortable questions about freebies received from top Labour donor Lord Alli. Last month, it emerged that Alli received a No. 10 pass after funding the PM’s wardrobe – before the Sunday Times revealed at the weekend that Lady Starmer had also been a beneficiary
All is not well in the Labour party. Diane Abbott has launched an attack on the Prime Minister over his behaviour towards her during the Frank Hester racism row. The Labour MP for Hackney North has told the Beeb that she felt Sir Keir Starmer treated her like a ‘non-person’ following the Tory donor fallout,
There’s trouble in Sir Keir’s Labour paradise, it seems, after the Prime Minister jetted off to Italy for a migration-focused meet-up with Giorgia Meloni. The PM is struggling to find a small boat-busting strategy; with over 800 migrants crossing the Channel to English shores on Saturday alone, Starmer has turned to his European allies for
To Glasgow’s Science Centre, where on Saturday Scotland’s former first minister Alex Salmond brought together a whole host of pro-indy voices for a nationalist natter. Featuring former SNP MPs Joanna Cherry, Alex Neil and Dr Philippa Whitford as well as online blogger Stuart Campbell (aka. Wings Over Scotland), Salmond’s ‘The Ayes Still Have It!’ was
The Liberal Democrat party conference: surely a bastion of good old-fashioned free speech? Sadly not, it seems, given the storm which a single stall has provoked among activists down in Brighton.The party’s leadership has now been accused of ‘authoritarianism and intolerance’ over a backlash to a campaign group prompting single-sex spaces. Liberal Voice for Women,
To Westminster magistrates’ court where Huw Edwards has this afternoon been handed a suspended jail sentence of six months imprisonment, suspended for two years after pleading guilty in July to making indecent images of children. The former TV star admitted to having 41 indecent images of children, which had been sent to him by another
Sir Keir Starmer hasn’t been in office three months yet and already the Labour government is mired in cronyism controversies. One of the issues currently dogging the Prime Minister involves a rather wealthy donor Lord Alli and, er, Starmer’s wife. Last month, it emerged that Alli received a No. 10 pass after funding the PM’s
Conference season has begun in earnest and the Lib Dems are having a whale of a time in Brighton. After their best results in a century, the party is in a bullish mood, with Sir Ed Davey even rocking up yesterday on a jet ski. The next James Bond perhaps? And it’s in that spirit
If there’s something bad and you’re in a jam, who you gonna call? David Lammy! That’s right, the flailing Foreign Secretary has been out this morning doing his damnedest to defend the indefensible. The Talleyrand of Tottenham had something of a sticky wicket, following the Sunday Times revelations about gifts for Keir Starmer’s wife. And
Oh dear. It seems that the ‘passes for glasses’ row isn’t going away any time soon. A month after it was revealed that Lord Alli had received a Downing Street pass after bankrolling Keir Starmer’s wardrobe, today’s Sunday Times contains a fresh development. Not content with dressing up the Prime Minister, it seems that Alli
To the Women and Equalities Committee, to which Labour’s Sarah Owen has been elected chair. The Labour MP for Luton North achieved a majority of 7,500 in the July election and now has a select committee chairmanship under her belt too. But not everyone is especially thrilled by the announcement – not least because Owen
Sir Keir’s Labour government hasn’t been in power for long but already his administration is causing quite the stir. Pub owners have fears about Starmer’s outdoor smoking ban, food companies are concerned about the junk food ad crackdown and, it turns out, everyone is rather down about Labour’s ‘£22 billion blackhole’ narrative. Chancellor Rachel Reeves