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
It’s the new rule of British politics: if you’re going to quit, do it on a Friday. Labour has had something of a bumpy first nine months in office. Sue Gray was out within 94 days – and now others are following her out the door too. This morning, Matthew Doyle, the No. 10 director
Oh dear. The Babe Ruth of the bar has blundered once again. Jolyon Maugham, the kimono-cladded KC, has been raging about PPE contracts during Covid for years now. One company that has particularly attracted his ire is Meller Designs Ltd, formerly co-owned by businessman David Meller. During the pandemic, it was awarded six PPE supply
Talk about a belated Ides of March. It was less than 100 days before Keir Starmer sacked his first No. 10 Chief of Staff Sue Gray. To console the lifelong civil servant, Sir Keir rewarded her with a peerage, enabling her to spend the rest of her days making laws on the benches of the
When two inebriated RAF engineers broke a Paddington statue in half in Newbury earlier this month, they could not have predicted the scale of the reaction. But in the UK of 2025, a crime against Paddington is not simply an act of drunken vandalism, but an egregious offence against whichever collection of buzzwords is today
Oh dear. It seems that some Labour ministers are in desperate need of some media training. First, there was Seema Malhotra mixing up the inflation rate with interest rates. Now, Darren Jones – Rachel Reeves’ No. 2 – has managed to put his foot in it on her proposed benefit cuts. Appearing on Politics Live
Happy spring statement day, one and all. Today’s fiscal event – which is definitely NOT an ’emergency Budget’ – looks set to contain more gloom and doom about Rachel Reeves’ vanishing fiscal headroom. Looks like that £40bn October tax raid didn’t help much eh? So, with inflation still running high and the growth figures revised downward,
As Denis Healey said: ‘when you’re in a hole, stop digging.’ It has been a furious day in Trumpland after White House officials accidentally added journalist Jeffrey Goldberg to a highly sensitive group chat on Signal about planned airstrikes in Yemen. Initially, the administration went on the offensive, with Defense Secretary Pete Hesketh calling Goldberg
Ding ding ding! To the latest round of political infighting, involving Reform UK and its former MP Rupert Lowe. The independent report commissioned by Nigel Farage’s party into the suspended politician has been released today – and, for Lowe, its conclusions won’t make for comfortable reading… The 13-page report describe the complaints of bullying and
Should the race to net zero come at any cost? Ed Miliband’s crowd appears to think so. The Energy Security Secretary will overturn a ban on forced labour to further his zero carbon ambitions, it transpires, as today the government will whip its parliamentarians to vote down an amendment that would prevent eco-friendly materials being
This week was never going to be an easy one for Rachel Reeves, what with her Spring Statement – likely to include controversial spending cuts – tomorrow. But things are going from bad to worse for the beleaguered Chancellor as yet more Labour ministers hit out at her latest Sabrina Carpenter freebie. Dear oh dear…
Tick tock. There are less than 48 hours to go until Rachel Reeves’s big Spring Statement on Wednesday and as the Treasury finalises its preparations for the big reveal, YouGov has been running some tax-related tests of its own. In a blow for the reds, the polling company has found that it is becoming more
It’s a day ending in ‘y’ which means there’s more bad news for the Scottish Nats. Now new polling for unionist group Scotland in Union shows that most Scots feel safer as part of the United Kingdom. The Survation survey revealed that most of Scotland’s population believe they are more secure – and have more
It’s a hard time to be in Sir Keir Starmer’s Labour government, what with poor poll ratings and dismal economic forecasts to contend with. Perhaps that’s why Deputy Prime Minister Angela Rayner felt she deserved a free safari tour during a work trip to Ethiopia earlier this year. But it transpires her hopes were rather
To Buckingham, for a blast of soundness at the annual Margaret Thatcher conference. Star of the show was David Frost, the guest speaker at last night’s dinner. And the Tory peer has certainly been brushing up on his political bon mots, judging by his lines to the 200 attendees. Frost compared the ‘amateurish farrago’ of
For years now, Mr S has been covering the long-running farce that is China’s proposed new ‘super-embassy’. Back in 2018, Beijing bought the site of the old Royal Mint, declaring their intention to turn the Tower Hamlets location into the country’s largest diplomatic mission in Europe. But for the past seven years, various planning concerns
The BBC’s legions of staff seem to be struggling to cope with, um, the news. The corporation has issued an emotional support notice for colleagues affected by events across the water, after the election of US President Donald Trump – with the Beeb gushing that its ‘commitment to diversity, inclusion and belonging remains unwavering’. How
To Scotland, where the Holyrood exodus continues. Now SNP veteran Fergus Ewing – son of Winnie Ewing, one of the first nationalist politicians to be elected to Westminster – has announced that he will not stand for the party at the 2026 election. But on whether he will leave frontline politics altogether, Ewing is less
Uh oh. As the news about the closure of Heathrow airport circulates around the country, Mr S has been rather concerned to see instances of faulty reporting by the media. Both Sky News and, surprise surprise, the Guardian got rather confused in their coverage this morning – mixing up the Swedish airline SAS with British
There’s no such thing as a quiet day in Westminster. This afternoon, demonstrators invaded the House of Lords in protest at the existence of the unelected second chamber – carrying leaflets reminiscent of a Sex Pistols album, with the words: ‘Never mind the Lords, here’s the House of People.’ Charming! The rather rude interruption waylaid
Back to Scotland, where former chief executive of the SNP, Peter Murrell, has appeared in court charged with embezzlement. The ex-husband of Dear Leader Nicola Sturgeon was charged in connection with the ongoing police probe into the party’s funds and finances last April – and this morning appeared in Edinburgh Sheriff Court. And now, it