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
Well, well, well. The SNP’s annual accounts for 2022 are out and it’s not looking good. The party recorded its largest ever deficit of more than £800,000 in the last year of Nicola Sturgeon and Peter Murrell’s reign. As if we didn’t need any more evidence that the Nats aren’t good with their money… While the
Lucy Letby this week became only the third woman alive to be handed a whole-life jail term after being sentenced for murdering seven babies and trying to kill another six. But for an outraged British public it seems that sentence is not enough. A new poll for The Spectator by Redfield & Wilton show that
When your wife is worth £500 million, it can be tough to keep remember all her interests. Back in April, the parliamentary commissioner for standards, Daniel Greenberg, announced a probe into Rishi Sunak. It followed a Liaison Committee meeting in which Sunak did not mention the shares Akshata Murty held in the company Koru Kids,
Very few people came out well of the Nigel Farage banking scandal – which saw the former Brexit party leader lose his Coutts bank account over his political views. In the end, Farage managed to claim two scalps over the affair, with both NatWest’s and Coutts’ CEOs forced into humiliating resignations. Still it may be that
Oh dear. It seems that, in their earnestness to make capital out of tragedy, Labour have slipped up again. The party yesterday sought to exploit Lucy Letby’s refusal to attend her sentencing, tweeting that ‘Rishi Sunak has dragged his heels over changing the law to make criminals attend their court sentencing. We believe victims deserve
Rab Butler spoke of the art of politics but the politics of art is quite another matter. The summer recess will find many of Britain’s politicians perusing the world’s museums and art galleries. So as a treat to his readers Mr S can now reveal, via a Freedom of Information request, the treasures from the
News of a troubling case reaches Steerpike. Earlier this month the Administrative Court handed down judgment in the case of R (AI) -v- London Borough of Wandsworth and Secretary of State for Education [2023] EWHC 2088 (Admin). It’s a complex ruling on a complex case, not likely to catch the attention of the public. But
Poor Ron DeSantis. Once, he was the frontrunner to take over the Republican mantle from Trump. But now, following a staff exodus, tanking ratings and a barrage of insults from The Donald, the Florida Governor looks to be yesterday’s man. DeSantis is currently a whopping 45 points behind in the polls for the Republican nomination,
It’s a tough time for Scottish nationalists these days. Polling for indyref2 remains static while the SNP’s own ratings have tanked. There are still no ferries or any sign of a workable bottle return scheme. And the Dear Leader has left the stage to be replaced by hapless Humza Yousaf: the biggest downgrade since Ian
Oh dear. Hapless Humza Yousaf has tripped up again. The flailing First Minister of Scotland was today asked by Radio Clyde News if he will be watching the Women’s World Cup final on Sunday between England and Spain. Yousaf initially enthusiastically declared that ‘I will be watching the game for sure’. Yet when the reporter
Good old Sadiq Khan: the right-on left-winger who never met a camera he didn’t like. The Mayor of London hit the headlines again last month with his controversial new ‘Maaate’ campaign. It calls on men to say: ‘Maaate’ to their friend if they see anything untoward towards women, in a bid to stamp out harassment.
In these turbulent times, it’s good to know there’s one thing we can count on: Keir Starmer’s consistent inconsistency. The Labour leader is at it again, breaking yet another of his past pledges: this time on workers’ rights. In 2021 Sir Keir’s party pledged to create a single status of ‘worker’ in employment law to
When it comes to conservation, it seems that not all at the RSPB are singing from the same hymn sheet. Amir Khan was elected as the charity’s president last October, having found fame as the resident doctor on ITV’s Good Morning Britain. Amid media attention around the ‘Glorious Twelfth,’ Khan took to Twitter this week
Jordan Peterson has never been shy about dispensing advice. But has the court of the Canadian philosopher king now overreached itself? A copy of Peterson’s book ‘Beyond Order: 12 More Rules for Life’ sparked something of a Twitter storm yesterday, when critic James Marriott noted how a truncated form of his Times review has appeared
It’s an ITV drama just waiting to be filmed. The saga surrounding the family of the late Captain Sir Tom Moore has now taken a fresh twist, following a Newsnight investigation. The programme alleges that Moore’s daughter, Hannah Ingram-Moore, was paid thousands of pounds via her family company for appearances in connection with her late
Cast your minds back to the new millennium: Tony Blair was in power, Robbie Williams top of the chart. It was the year the Dome opened; so too did Portcullis House in Westminster. Back then, the £235 million parliamentary office was predicted to last two centuries when it opened, thanks to its supposed quality workmanship
When it comes to the Johnson government, ministers weren’t always judged to have done things by the book. But Mr S has done some digging and it turns out that the former PM did his bit to restore one of the lesser-known No. 10 traditions. In 1931, Ramsay MacDonald began the practice of incumbent and
There was a time when Boris backers accused Rishi Sunak of being in cahoots with Dominic Cummings, as part of a plot to bring down the former PM. However, the relationship has certainly cooled since such claims. In his latest Substack, Cummings accuses Sunak of having no grip on power, no governing plan, no serious
This week the government has been focusing its energies on small boats crossing the channel, with several new immigration announcements. The government aim was to fill the news vacuum over the summer and put pressure on Labour. How has Small Boats Week gone so far? Well, today both the Times and Mail led on the
Uh oh. Following a rowdy bust up with the SNP’s chief whip Brendan O’Hara, the party establishment has now chosen to expel Angus MacNeil MP. MacNeil, a close ally of former first minister Alex Salmond, was initially suspended after news of the fight broke, which saw him reportedly seethe ‘you’re a small wee man!’ at