Keith vaz

Well 2021 is at an end and what a hell of a year it’s been. There were laughs, tears, shock, disgust and despair – and that was just the reaction to footage of Matt Hancock’s video nasty. The past twelve months have seen various ups and downs in Britain and abroad, ranging from the highlights of the vaccine rollout and England’s Euro run to low points like the Capitol coup, the Afghanistan debacle and various pandemic pitfalls. And Mr S has been there throughout it all to chart the gossip, drama, high politics and low shenanigans. Tony Benn once sniffed that it was ‘issues, not personalities’ that mattered; Steerpike holds that the inverse is true when

Keith Vaz is facing the longest suspension in history after the Commons Standards Committee found he had breached the MPs’ Code of Conduct by paying two male escorts for sex and offering to cover the cost of cocaine for a third man. The Committee – which is made up of MPs and lay members, said he had ’caused significant damage to the reputation and integrity of the House of Commons as a whole’, and said it represented ‘a very serious breach of the Code’. This brings to an end a row which has gone on since August 2016, when Vaz met the two men in his flat. One of them

After a conspicuous one year absence, Keith Vaz’s ‘Diversity Nite’ has made a comeback at Labour’s conference. Vaz kept a low profile at last year’s party gathering in the wake of allegations surrounding a pair of rent boys. This year, Vaz’s big conference bash – which involves members of the shadow cabinet dancing while Vaz presides on stage – made a return. Behind Vaz flashed up pictures of the likes of Martin Luther King, Nelson Mandela and Rosa Parks, as guests munched on Leicester’s finest Biryanis. On stage, Jeremy Corbyn was presented as the guest of honour by Vaz to chants of ‘Oh, Jeremy Corbyn’ from the crowd. Here’s a video of Jez’s

Keith Vaz kept a low profile at last year’s Labour party conference. In the wake of allegations surrounding a pair of rent boys, Vaz had to call off his annual ‘diversity’ shindig. Now, a year on he is returning to the limelight – and his ‘Diversity Nite’ is back on. The event, held in Brighton’s Walkabout nightclub, is hailed as a chance to ‘join Keith Vaz and the Labour Party’s Ethnic Minority Taskforce to celebrate diversity with special guests’: Mr S for one is looking forward to it…

Theresa May used her first big speech on foreign policy last night to spell out the need for globalisation to change. She adopted a softer approach than she did in her conference speech, when she went on the warpath against the liberal elite, says James Forsyth. Yet she remained clear: this year’s political upheaval shows something needs to give. It’s hard to fault that thinking, but while many would agree with the Prime Minister, does May have the answers for what this change should look like? No, says the Guardian, which slates Theresa May for having no answers to the key questions left following Donald Trump’s election victory. The paper says the Prime Minister

On the morning of the 24th June, Britain woke to find its stock market shattered and its pound pummelled. It appeared – for a brief moment – like all the prophecies of the Brexit doomsayers, not least the Great Seer Osborne, had come true. But then, from the wreckage of that mid-summer morning, green shoots began to appear, and now, more than two months down the line, it seems that Britain has bounced back. In his cover piece this week, Ross Clark argues that the Remain campaign fell victim to the perils of believing their opinion to be ‘objective fact’, and that economic recovery has humiliated the Treasury, Bank of

What can you fill your time with if you’re a former Labour frontbencher left twiddling your thumbs as a result of Jeremy Corbyn’s leadership? Well, as Caroline Flint and Chuka Umunna have shown this week by launching themselves into campaigns to replace Keith Vaz, chairing a select committee is a pretty attractive option, particularly when it is one as prestigious as the Home Affairs Committee. But both have also shown over the past few months that it is possible to be a forlorn former frontbencher and still achieve something. Umunna was on the airwaves on Monday morning talking about migration controls: a slot his Shadow Cabinet colleagues might only dream

Today Keith Vaz has stepped down as chair of the Home Affairs Select Committee following a series of claims about his personal life. His decision comes after a number of his Labour comrades tried to help his cause by going onto the airwaves to wax lyrical about their colleague. Simon Danczuk — who is currently suspended from the party for sexting a 17-year-old — appeared on the Victoria Derbyshire show to claim that Vaz is a well-respected MP. He was joined by Ken Livingstone — who is currently suspended from the party over his claim that Hitler was ‘supporting Zionism’ before he ‘went mad and ended up killing six million Jews’. Livingstone did manage to wax lyrical about

Keith Vaz has just asked a second question in the House of Commons, despite it being unclear whether he can continue as chair of the Home Affairs Committee for the long term following allegations about his private life in the Sunday newspapers. The Leicester East MP, who has a meeting with his committee tomorrow afternoon, is clearly not going down without a fight: he wouldn’t be standing up in the Commons, otherwise. When a scandal-hit MP stands up in the Commons in the days after lurid newspaper headlines, they are normally either mocked and heckled by jubilant colleagues on the other side of the house, or welcomed with supportive noises