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
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
Oh dear. The Sunday Times is tonight reporting that a Westminster parliamentary researcher has been arrested on suspicion of spying for China. The male suspect, who is in his late twenties, is reported to be linked to a number of senior Tory MPs, including several who are privy to classified or highly sensitive information. Among them are
To Shoreditch, unlikely terrain for this year’s Tory Reform Group conference. The last such shindig happened in pre-Covid times, with the One Nation Conservatives keen to make up for lost time. Damian Green, Maria Miller and Tom Tugendhat were among a succession of MPs who appeared before the activists, proudly extolling the virtues of the
Stop the presses: common sense has broken out in parliament. On Thursday, Suella Braverman delivered an update on the anti-terror programme Prevent, following a review into its effectiveness by Sir William Shawcross in February. Among Shawcross’s findings was his criticism about Prevent’s work on supposed ‘right-wing extremism’. An analysis done by Prevent’s ‘Research Information and
You know it’s bad when the rugby fans are booing you. Poor Emmanuel Macron had his big moment upstaged last night as the World Cup kicked off in Paris. Ahead of the first game between the hosts and New Zealand, the embattled President had to delay his welcome speech from a lectern on the pitch,
Dear oh dear. It appears Fergus Ewing has exposed one painful truth too many. The nationalist veteran is expected to have the whip removed within days after the party’s leadership decided that his backbench criticisms have gone unpunished too long. Ewing — who is rumoured to be the only Spectator subscriber on the SNP benches — will
Martin Selmayr, the so-called Beast of the Berlaymont, is no stranger to controversy. During his time as head of European Commission president Jean-Claude Juncker’s cabinet and as secretary-general of the Commission, Selmayr became something of a bete noire of Brexiteers, having been accused of wanting to ‘punish’ the UK for leaving the EU. Despite, or perhaps because, of
Oh dear. Could things get any worse for the fledgling BBC Verify, launched to combat the scourge of fake news? The fact-checking service has already faced criticism for failing to spot the BBC’s own blunders – such as the Corporation’s misfired reporting on Nigel Farage and Coutts. Now though it looks like the service’s star reporter
Carol Vorderman’s campaign against the Tories suffered a setback today after the ex-Countdown host climbed down from a row with the party’s chairman Greg Hands. Vorderman sent a number of tweets earlier this year over Hands’ alleged involvement in the awarding of a £25 million PPE contract. But Vorderman has now issued a statement appearing
Oh dear. It seems that Sir Humphrey has messed up again. Perusing parliament’s records this morning, Mr S was struck by a written ministerial statement put down by Kemi Badenoch’s Department for Business and Trade (DBT). The nearly-created ministry came to life back in February, when the old Department for International Trade (DIT) was combined