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
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Well, well, well. As Baroness Casey prepares to publish her review into Britain’s grooming gang scandal, a rather curious speaker was invited on to Radio 4’s ‘Thought for the Day’ this morning. Step forward, the Bishop of Manchester, Reverend David Walker, who told us that… This is not a pattern of offending confined to any
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A real cheery week in the Commons is looming for our lucky legislators. There’s assisted dying, grooming gangs and a welfare row to enjoy. But tomorrow attention will switch to abortion, with Labour MPs now pushing to ‘decriminalise’ the practice in England and Wales. Unfortunately, a bit of a row has broken out between Tonia
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All is not well with the Labour lot. It has emerged that more than 50 lefty MPs submitted a letter to the Leader of the Commons, Lucy Powell, at the weekend – demanding she intervene to delay this Friday’s final third reading vote on Kim Leadbeater’s controversial assisted dying bill. The letter blasts the limited
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Dear oh dear. It’s never a good look to go onto the airwaves to boast about your department’s new infrastructure fund to then, er, promptly forget the details of the project you’re funding. The unlucky minister who found herself in this position today was the Treasury’s Emma Reynolds, who appeared to forget both exactly where
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It’s been quite the year for Bridget Phillipson. The under fire Education Secretary is now regularly tipped as one of the ministers most likely to be moved at the next reshuffle. Her Schools Bill has been lambasted for its impact on academies while her private school tax raid is hitting the state school sector too.
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Uh oh. Chief Secretary to the Treasury Darren Jones has found himself in a tight spot after his Question Time appearance on Thursday night. The Labour MP for Bristol North West told the BBC audience on the issue of Britain’s borders that ‘the majority of the people in these boats are children, babies and women’.
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No one was especially interested in Jolyon Maugham’s take on next week’s abortion amendments, but the Babe Ruth of the bar has waded into it all the same. The fight is on as rival amendments to decriminalise abortion battle for support ahead of next week’s free vote on a change in the law. Now the
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While certain government departments celebrated Rachel Reeves’s spending review – Deputy Prime Minister Angela Rayner even threw a party the night before the Chancellor’s speech – economists are not quite as impressed. In fact, the Labour Chancellor has been accused of ‘making up numbers’ in her big speech after offering up rather incoherent guidance on
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Dear oh dear. With just days to go until the Scottish Conservative conference, party leader Russell Findlay will have been hoping for a quiet news week. He has had no such luck however – at the eleventh hour, it transpires that yet another one of his Aberdeenshire councillors has defected to Reform UK. Lauren Knight
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There were always going to be winners and losers in Chancellor Rachel Reeves’s spending review and it appears that Sadiq Khan’s London has pulled the short straw. The Labour mayor’s frustration at the Chancellor deepened this week ahead of her speech today over fears that the capital wouldn’t a sufficient cut of the government’s cash.
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As if the Labour government didn’t have enough on its plate with Rachel Reeves’s spending review to be announced at midday, it is also facing pressure from the US over sanctions imposed on two Israeli cabinet ministers. Late last night, US Secretary of State Marco Rubio warned that the travel ban and asset freezes imposed
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How much have political donors gifted to their party coffers? Well, the results are now in. Today’s Electoral Commission figures bring some long overdue good news for Kemi Badenoch’s Conservatives, who have come out on top: the Tories received a whopping £3.3 million of donations between the 1 January and 31 March 2025. In fact,
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Well, well, well. After the failed attempt by Greta Thunberg and her comrades in the Freedom Flotilla Coalition on ship Madleen to take aid into Gaza, it transpires that the climate activist has now been put on an, er, plane as Israel deports her to France. The eco-zealot has long been vocal about her disdain
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To Whitehall, where Foreign Office staff are kicking up a fuss about the UK government’s stance on the Israel-Palestine conflict. As the Times reports, last month over 300 civil servants wrote to Foreign Secretary David Lammy to protest the continued arms sales to Israel – blasting it as a ‘disregard for international law’. The mandarins
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For years, Steerpike has been warning about the dangers of a new Chinese ‘super-embassy’ being built in Tower Hamlets. Located on the site of Britain’s old Royal Mint, there are plans to build Beijing’s largest overseas outpost, sitting opposite the Tower of London. Local residents, many of whom are Uighur Muslim, are viscerally opposed, while
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Good news for British bobbies: you are about to get a real-terms pay rise. Yes, that is right: Yvette Cooper has reportedly wrung the change out of Rachel Reeves, amid some eleventh-hour pay negotiations ahead of Wednesday’s spending review. But while few would begrudge those working hard some extra cash, Mr S is not alone
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Back to Scotland, where yet another ferry is facing further delays. The MV Glen Rosa, which is being built at the Ferguson Marine shipyard in Port Glasgow, has been hit by another setback – despite already being six years behind schedule and more than £100 million over budget. Talk about incompetent, eh? This isn’t the
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Gary Lineker may have been finally forced out of the Beeb, but the ex-footballer is still managing to make headlines. Now it transpires that the son of the late award-winning football journalist Brian Glanville – who was made football correspondent for the Sunday Times in 1958 and covered every World Cup for the next 44
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Oh dear. It sounds as though Rachel Reeves was something of a bust at the big CBI shindig last night at the swish 8 Northumberland Avenue venue in central London. It was barely seven months ago that the Chancellor confidently promised the lobby group in the same room that ‘We’re not going to be coming
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There’s trouble in paradise, it seems. Perhaps the most eye-catching moment at yesterday’s PMQs came when Sarah Pochin, Reform’s newest MP, stood up to grill Keir Starmer for the first time. The moment was heavily trailed by deputy leader Richard Tice, who promised it would be ‘interesting’ in a video on X. Pochin duly rose
