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
There’s drama in Labourland today as one backbencher appears to have had second thoughts about her stance on benefits payments – after the Get Britain Working group’s open letter went out with her name on it. The letter, which has called upon Work and Pensions Secretary Liz Kendall to introduce a ‘new social contract’ to
If you, dear reader, have visited parliament in recent years, you might have had the misfortune to be confronted by one of the new-fangled orange traffic marshals popping up around the estate. Given the crumbling state of the Commons, Mr S is constantly querying whether this army of apparatchiks is really necessary – given that
Farewell Nicola Sturgeon. The former first minister took to the professional platform that is Instagram today to announce that she will be stepping down as an MSP at the next election. After much speculation, the SNP’s ex-Dear Leader has confirmed that she does not plan to stand for Holyrood in 2026 – after spending more
Today brings the news that the flailing Guardian Media Group has had to pay out ‘substantial damages’ to The Spectator’s Douglas Murray – after the Observer was found to have defamed him. In a court statement, lawyers for the paper said it ‘apologises unreservedly’ for the ‘false’ allegations it made about Murray in a piece
Is Nigel Farage’s position under threat? Most inside Reform don’t seem to think so – but a new poll offers a warning shot to the Clacton MP. It transpires that a third of the party’s voters think Reform would be performing better if he stepped down and allowed another to take his place. Who might
To Scotland, where the beleaguered Nats have appointed their third chief executive in two years. Yet Carol Beattie wasn’t able to celebrate for long after some of her rather unsavoury social media interactions aimed at the royal family were dredged up by her opponents. The most egregious example came after the Princess of Wales was
It was Alastair Campbell who declared that ‘if a story stays front page news for more than ten days, the chances are it is a real issue.’ Well, we are now on day five of the great Reform fall out and it is still making waves. Nigel Farage spoke to ITV Anglia about Rupert Lowe last
To the Covid Inquiry, the longest-running farce outside of the West End. With costs for the great gravy train now expected to top £200 million, Fleet Street hacks are certainly getting their money’s worth. There was the mammoth grilling of a brooding Boris Johnson in December 2023. The ritual humiliation of ‘simple’ Simon Case back
Sound the by-election claxon, Runcorn is a-go! Yes, that’s right – five months after his kerfuffle on the kerb, Mike Amesbury has (for once) done the decent thing. In an interview with the BBC, the disgraced ex-Labour MP today declared it is his intention to resign from the House of Commons ‘shortly’ and trigger a
As the Assisted Dying Bill continues to make its unceremonious way through parliament, various medical organisations are making themselves heard. The British Medical Association has featured throughout the public debate, so Mr S was struck by one of the motions passed at its annual consultants’ conference last week. Here, senior doctors vote upon motions relating
Oh dear, it looks like the civil war engulfing Reform UK is showing no sign of simmering down. On Friday, the political party currently leading in the polls went into complete meltdown after it announced that it had reported one of its MPs, Rupert Lowe, to the police and was suspending the whip. Party chairman
It’s a day ending in ‘y’, which means the Scottish Nats are arguing amongst themselves again. Ex-SNP MP Mhairi Black has taken a pop at the party’s former Dear Leader Nicola Sturgeon in a new BBC documentary released this week about her time in politics. In the programme – in which Black blasts Westminster culture
Some good news for Kemi Badenoch today. The latest donation figures for the end of 2024 are out – and they make for happy reading for the beancounters in CCHQ. The Tories reported £3.8 million in donations between October and December, compared to £1.6 million for the Liberal Democrats, £1.4 million for Labour and £336,800
Donald Trump is intent on shaking things up in the White House and no one knows that better than neighbouring Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau. The US President ramped up his tariff war this week – and tensions between the pair seem to have taken their toll on Trudeau, even reducing him to tears during
Oh dear. Poor Richard Tice is the latest politician to have an embarrassing memory lapse. During his first trip to Scotland of 2025, the Boston and Skegness MP appeared in Glasgow this morning to reveal his party’s newest defectors. Except, er, he couldn’t quite remember their names… When he was grilled by one Scottish hack
It seems that NHS Scotland still hasn’t learned the lessons from the Sandie Peggie furore. Now it turns out that a ‘cultural humility’ training module for healthcare workers produced in December 2023 told them to call bearded trans staff ‘women’ – and even suggested gender-neutral toilets should be introduced in care homes. With over 700,000
It’s a day ending in ‘y’ – which means there’s more bad news for the BBC. Now the government has taken aim at the broadcaster, with Culture Secretary Lisa Nandy slamming the Beeb today in a parliamentary statement. In the scathing text, Nandy wrote of how she is ‘deeply shocked and disappointed’ about the Hamas
Is Lindsay Hoyle turning into John Bercow? Mr S first asked the question in January after revealing that the Speakers’ Office had doubled in size on Hoyle’s watch. And now other outlets are running with the same theme, by looking at the Speaker’s trips abroad. It seems the man of the people rather enjoys the
It’s a turbulent time for the Western world, but Sir Keir Starmer’s Labour government doesn’t seem to be taking things all that seriously. At least, not where its National Security Adviser is concerned. Jonathan Powell, Starmer’s lineman on the Chagos deal, is apparently banned from speaking to the national security committee on the grounds he
The western world might be collapsing but here in Westminster it is business as usual. In one of parliament’s dusty old committee rooms, Kim Leadbeater’s Assisted Dying Bill continues to slowly make its way through the legislative process, one agonising line at a time. But if you hoped that this exercise would be a Socratic
