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’s ‘Stop the Boats’ week in 10 Downing Street as the government tries to set the news agenda over the long summer recess. There were early signs of success as Suella Braverman’s pledge to target ‘crooked‘ immigration lawyers ran across various news outlets along with plans to crackdown on migrant traffickers in Turkey.
Another day, another ridiculous revelation emerges about the Scottish government. This time, it’s civil servants who are in hot water for splashing taxpayers’ cash on laser tag, Swingers (no, not that kind) crazy golf and a trip to Edinburgh Zoo. Public cash was also used to foot a £375 bill at Brewhemia, dubbed Scotland’s ‘beer
It looks like trimming the fat isn’t going too well at the civil service, despite the government’s middling efforts. Between 2016 and 2018 the government capped pay rises for mandarins – and froze salaries entirely in 2021 to bring down the costs of the bloated public sector. New analysis from the TaxPayers’ Alliance though shows that
As if there aren’t enough questions about the SNP’s spending habits, it turns out the Nats have been using £55,000 of taxpayer’s money to fund their library collection. An investigation by Labour has unearthed some rather amusing revelations about the SNP’s reading list, not least that the party has been busy educating itself with books
Has Lee Anderson finally gone too far? Still reeling after finding out his son turned vegetarian at university (‘shocking, absolutely shocking’), the Tory party deputy chairman told the Express that illegal migrants who don’t want to be housed on barges should ‘f*** off back to France’. ‘I think people have just had enough’, he told the paper. ‘These people come across
Good old Sir Humphrey. Tories, Labour, Lib Dems – whoever is in power, he always seems to win. In recent years, there appears to have been a veritable explosion in the number of leaks in Whitehall and, with them, the inevitable Cabinet Office inquiries. In July 2022, one was launched by Cabinet Secretary Simon Case
Despite it being the SNP’s main political goal, Scotland came no closer to becoming an independent state during Nicola Sturgeon’s long tenure as First Minister. Still, for Sturgeon, the SNP being in charge had at least one perk – it allowed her to cosplay as a world leader on the global stage. Who could forget the jet
Can Matt Hancock sink any lower? Considering that only last year he lost the whip for abandoning his constituents to appear on I’m a Celebrity, and before that had his lockdown-busting affair exposed to the world, you would probably think not. Even so, the former Health Secretary has managed to once again plumb new depths,
Since the election date for next year’s London mayoral election was announced, Sadiq Khan has been putting on a show of confidence that his re-election is in the bag with his supporters pointing to polling that suggests Labour enjoy a 40-point lead in the capital. However, the Ulez expansion – which Keir Starmer blamed on
Another month, another resignation honours list. It was a row over Boris Johnson’s peerages that led to Rishi Sunak facing multiple by-elections last month – with one still to follow, should Nadine Dorries ever get round to quitting. But when it comes to Liz Truss’s honours list, the row is not so much about the vetting
Having previously been known simply as ‘that footy pundit off the telly’, over the past year Gary Neville seems to have been trying to manoeuvre his way into politics. The former Man Utd captain signed up as a Labour member, conducted a cringeworthy Q&A with Keir Starmer at last year’s party conference, and has consistently
Taylor Swift mania has hit Los Angeles this weekend as the best-selling songstress takes her sold out Eras tour to the Sunny State. It means local residents are on high alert that there is a chance they cross paths with Swift. So spare a thought for the young woman who headed to an early morning
Labour’s newest and youngest MP, Keir Mather, is fresh out of Oxford – and on a path to the very top of his party. But the 25-year-old, who overturned a 20,000-vote Tory majority to win the Selby and Ainsty by-election last month, shares more than his first name with his party leader and boss, Keir
As the earth orbits the sun and leopards avoid changing their spots, so Eddie Izzard is again attempting to become a Labour MP. This time the comedian and actor, who also goes by the name Suzy, is standing to become the Labour candidate to replace Caroline Lucas in Brighton Pavilion. In 2022, Izzard tried unsuccessfully
Oh dear. It seems Health Minister Maria Caulfield failed to get the memo on government lines to take this morning, when she made the fatal error of assuming that her own party would be defeated in the next election. Speaking to Sky News as part of her morning broadcast round, she questioned the consequences of
Dear oh dear. Things haven’t been going well for for the Green party lately and now they’ve just got a whole lot worse. The Green’s first UK parliamentarian and former leader of the Scottish Greens Robin Harper has quit the party, announcing that the Greens have ‘lost the plot’. Mr S wonders how long it
Poor old BBC political editor Chris Mason got a rude awakening during his interview with Donald Trump’s former aide this morning. Sebastian Gorka blasted Mason for putting ‘words in his mouth’ in a fiery appearance on Radio 4’s Today programme. Gorka, who served as Trump’s former deputy assistant, defended his former boss who was charged
Rishi Sunak is jetting off on holiday to California this afternoon, but it seems the Prime Minister couldn’t resist a dig at Tory backbencher Nadine Dorries before he departs. Dorries, a close ally of Boris Johnson, has refused to quit parliament, despite saying in June that she would stand down as the MP for Mid Bedfordshire
Well, well, well. After almost three years of Margaret Ferrier’s Covid breaches coming under the spotlight, the SNP MP has finally been ousted from her seat in Rutherglen and Hamilton West. In the end, 11,896 people in her constituency – 14.7 per cent of eligible voters – physically signed the recall petition to eject her,
The government’s alcohol-duty reform came into force today, which could only mean one thing: the customary press pictures of politicians pulling pints. Earlier on today, the Chancellor Jeremy Hunt ‘popped to the local’ Two Chairmen in Westminster, while the famously teetotal Prime Minister went to a London beer festival to mark the change in alcohol