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
Oh dear. It seems that the sage of Hackney has blundered once more. Having lost the Labour whip last year for an asinine antisemitism letter, Diane Abbott is doing little it seems to try and win it back. She took to Twitter yesterday to criticise Wes Streeting, the Shadow Health Secretary, for daring to suggest
Back to Scotland and Humza Yousaf’s controversial new hate law. The First Minister’s Hate Crime Act has left an already overstretched and under-resourced police force swamped with trivial complaints. Of the over 7,000 reports made in the first week, only three per cent of these were actual crimes. And now the spotlight is on the
Well, well, well. Less than 24 hours after Keir Starmer tried to brush off questions about Angela Rayner, it turns out she is now the subject of a formal police investigation. Greater Manchester Police have this morning confirmed it is looking into claims that the Labour deputy leader may have mispaid capital gains tax over
Angela Rayner appears unable to shake off questions about her tax affairs — literally. And now in an interview with ITV Granada, even Sir Keir Starmer’s confidence in his deputy doesn’t seem to be watertight. The media attention on his second-in-command continues after weeks of speculation about whether Rayner avoided capital gains tax on her
Uh oh. Reform UK has not had an easy ride with its general election candidates, to put it mildly. Richard Tice’s party has already had to drop ten prospective candidates for posting inappropriate comments on social media, including one who identified as a ‘pastafarian’ while another called for documentary maker David Attenborough to be ‘killed
All is not well in the Harry Potter universe. Author of the hit wizarding novels and prominent women’s rights campaigner JK Rowling has revealed that, even if they apologise, she will not go easy on the lead actors of the Potter films for their stance on the trans debate. Less, er, expecto forgiveness and more
Oh dear. Having his leadership questioned is becoming an almost-daily occurrence for Prime Minister Rishi Sunak. When he announced he was going to introduce a smoking ban at the Conservative party conference in October, there were people in his own party rather aghast at the proposal, with more recent talk of a rebellion on the
Well, well, well. In a turn of events that is good news for Canada’s monarchists, a motion that would have amended the country’s Constitution Act — and made the oath to Canada’s monarch optional for MPs — was, on Wednesday, defeated. 113 voted for the motion while 197 voted against it. A cross-party group of
Try as she might to duck questions on her tax affairs, the issue just keeps following Angela Rayner around — literally. On a campaign event today in Teesside, the deputy Labour leader was met by three men in high-vis jackets, one of whom was later identified as local Tory councillor John Coulson who took part
Uh oh. Today brings tidings of misery for hapless Humza Yousaf as a new poll reveals that support for Labour has overtaken the SNP for the first time since the 2014 indyref. The YouGov survey sees Labour on 33 per cent, up a point since October last year, while support for the Nats has gone
Reform UK’s election campaign hasn’t got off to the best start. Richard Tice’s party has already had to drop ten prospective parliamentary candidates after some rather unsavoury social media posts were highlighted by media organisations and campaign groups. The Reform leader has since said that his party had published its candidate list early so that
The honeytrap scandal is the talk of the town as politicians, staffers, advisers and even journalists working in Westminster have been targeted by the sexting scammers. First to publicly admit he had engaged with the phishers was the Conservative MP — and until last night, vice chairman of the 1922 Committee — William Wragg MP.
One might expect a global human rights organisation to wholeheartedly condemn a man involved in the brutal torture of a teenage soldier. Not the Amnesty International of 2024, it seems. On Monday night, the charity instead lamented the death of Palestinian prisoner Walid Daqqa, tweeting: The death in custody of Walid Daqqa, a 62-year-old Palestinian
Oh dear. It seems things can only get worse for hapless Humza Yousaf. With his independence strategy dead in the water, he now has to contend with troubles at home too. Police Scotland has today confirmed that they have arrested Yousaf’s brother-in-law and charged him with abduction and extortion. It follows the death of a
David Cameron is overseas on a foreign office trip to the US, but it transpired yesterday evening that Washington DC wasn’t to be his only destination. Last night, the Foreign Secretary made a quick pit stop at Mar-a-Lago to speak to former president Donald Trump. Lord Cameron is making the case for continued support for
Uh oh. Labour is once again facing dissent from its own supporters over the Israel-Gaza conflict. Things came to a head this afternoon when a group of renegades targeted Labour HQ in London by — you guessed it — dousing the building in spray paint. While other protestors held a march in central London, the
Uh oh. David Lammy is back in the spotlight again after Ofcom’s announcement today that it is investigating the shadow foreign secretary for breaching rules on his LBC show. The broadcasting regulator took to Twitter with the update, writing: We’ve launched an investigation into David Lammy on LBC, broadcast on 29 March. We’re investigating whether
Back to the Westminster honeytrap, and now Dame Andrea Jenkyns has revealed that she was also targeted by the parliamentary phishing operation. Jenkyns is the third MP to go public, following her Conservative colleagues William Wragg and Luke Evans who admitted last week that they had been sent suspicious and rather salacious messages. But the
Another day, another drama. This morning it was the turn of Reform party leader Richard Tice to be interviewed on the BBC’s Today programme. Tice’s party recently gained its first MP after former Tory deputy chairman Lee Anderson defected in March, telling a press conference that he wanted ‘his country back’ and hitting out at
When you’re in a hole, who gonna call? David Lammy! Yes, the Shadow Foreign Secretary was out on the airwaves this morning, chivalrously, if quixotically, riding to the rescue of his under-fire deputy leader. Angela Rayner is facing claims she may have wrongly avoided capital gains tax and broken electoral law, with the Mail on
