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
Who knew a high-speed rail network involved so many U-turns? It’s not just the government who are flip-flopping on HS2 expansion: anything they can do, Labour can do better! The Opposition have now tried three different positions in 48 hours on suggestions that HS2’s planned route could be cut back. On Sunday, frontbencher Pat McFadden
Radio 4 show In Our Time celebrates its landmark 1,000th episode this week. Host Melvyn Bragg is one of the Beeb’s biggest stars, but it seems his salary hardly puts him on level pegging with some of the corporation’s other big names. In an interview marking In Our Time‘s millennial episode, Bragg gently points out that
There’s nothing the Nats wouldn’t do to give their independence obsession a little more airtime. They’ll take the publicity from wherever they can get it – and that includes the pro-Putin Russia Today programme. It has emerged that First Minister Humza Yousaf appeared on the controversial channel twice in the past, first in 2013 and
With the polls pointing to a Tory thrashing, how many of the 2019 Red Wallers will win their seats next time? One who isn’t hanging around to find out is Dehenna Davison, the 30-year-old MP for Bishop Auckland. She announced back in November that she was standing down from parliament and today she has also
She’s back! One year on from the mini-Budget, Liz Truss arrived at the Institute for Government, flashing grins and firing off one-liners. The speech was of the pure Trussite vintage – little humility but much recrimination, with fingers labelled at the Usual Suspects of ‘corporatist social democracy’. Then it was on to the Q&A –
It all kicked off on GB News this morning, following a joint Sunday Times and Channel 4 Dispatches investigation into Russell Brand, in which the news outlets accuse Brand of rape and sexual assault (Brand vehemently denies the allegations). After the pair interviewed Labour shadow minister Jonathan Ashworth, GB News host Andrew Pierce brought up
Poor Liz Truss. Today is the day Britain’s shortest-serving prime minister had hoped to launch an impassioned defence of her legacy. In a speech this morning marking the approaching anniversary of her disastrous mini budget, Truss planned to talk up her economic plan and attack her critics among ‘the London dinner party circuit’. But it
If only more politicians were like Rory Stewart. That is pretty much the gist of his book Politics on the Edge. While Stewart is the man called into politics to serve the people, the same isn’t true of his colleagues. Stewart’s memoir has a short list of ‘goodies’; namely, himself. But there is a long
The Labour party is on a charm offensive – not with Brits, but with our European cousins over the water. Keir Starmer has unveiled plans to drop the Rwanda deportation programme and cosy back up to Brussels in the hope of striking a new asylum deal. But it seems Labour’s plans to present themselves as the party who will kiss
Ding ding! Over the river at City Hall things got heated this morning with London Mayor Sadiq Khan forced to apologise for labelling a Tory rival ‘thick’. Khan was being grilled over the expanded Ulez zone during Mayor’s Question Time, with Conservative London Assembly member Peter Fortune trying repeatedly to pin Khan down on when reports
It’s been a difficult week for Sinosceptics in Westminster, following the revelation that a parliamentary researcher was arrested in March on suspicion of spying for China. Much of the media attention has focused on the MPs to whom the researcher was linked: namely Alicia Kearns and Tom Tugendhat. For the past three years they have championed
So. Farewell then. Tobias Ellwood. For more than three years, the Bournemouth East has run the Defence Select Committee with the tact of Alan Partridge and the foresight of Michael Fish. But today his luck finally ran out after committing a gaffe too far. Ellwood’s now-infamous Taliban video proved too much even for some of
Whatever else down the centuries, at least the Scots always had their sense of humour. But now, in Humza Yousaf’s Scotland, even that seems to be under threat. For BBC Scotland has now pulled satirical cartoons of politicians from social media, following criticism from members of Yousaf’s government. The broadcaster has now announced it is
The Róisín Murphy row rumbles on. The Irish singer suffered a pile-on last month after she criticised puberty blockers and declared that ‘Big pharma [was] laughing all the way to the bank.’ She swiftly apologised but naturally, that wasn’t enough for the pitchfork-wielding mobs on social media. Traditional outlets piled in too, with the Guardian
The name’s Lammy, David Lammy. With Labour cruising in the polls, all signs point to the Shadow Foreign Secretary taking over at King Charles Street. And along with Chevening and 1 Carlton Gardens, comes responsibility for the Secret Intelligence Service and the nation’s overseas spooks. So Mr S was surprised upon tuning into LBC last
It’s just a few weeks left until Nadine Dorries’ successor is chosen by the good people of Mid-Bedfordshire. But the MP-turned-columnist shows no sign of going quietly, using her perch in the Mail to direct her ire at her onetime Tory colleagues. Today’s offering was another classic example. Headlined ‘I’ve seen how easy it is
All eyes in Westminster are on the chamber today, amid talk of MPs potentially using parliamentary procedure to name the alleged Chinese spy. First up after prayers at 2:30 p.m was the Speaker, who had tantalisingly teased the media with talk of ‘a brief statement’ in ‘relation to weekend media reports relating to allegations of
Oh dear. When it came to getting Brexit done, Boris Johnson was, it seems, winging it more than he might have wanted to let on. Speaking on the BBC’s Politics Live show today, Labour MP Barry Gardiner has revealed that when the former prime minister was still foreign secretary he didn’t know what a customs union was
Vindication, at last. For seven years, we have been told that the civil service is a bastion of impartiality, that the Foreign Office was utterly without agenda and that anyone who dared question this was a dangerous, Trumpite populist. But now Lord McDonald – the very model of a modern major mandarin – has given
First it was Nadine Dorries, then it was Theresa May. Now Liz Truss has become the latest female Tory MP to announce that they’re writing a book. Britain’s shortest-serving premier has today revealed details of her forthcoming work, titled Ten Years to Save the West. It is set be published next April by Biteback in
