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. Labour’s decision to cancel four mayoral elections by two years is not going down well, to put it lightly. The government has pushed back elections due to take place in May – in Essex, Hampshire and the Solent, Sussex and Brighton, and Norfolk and Suffolk – until 2028. Sir Keir Starmer’s crowd
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‘Anything you can do, I can do better.’ Throughout 2025, both Reform and the Conservatives have slugged it out, trading blows and scrapping for every inch of territory. With the future of the right at stake, neither party wants to be seen as losing political momentum ahead of 2029. Reform has comfortably led in the
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To the parties of opposition, about whom some rather interesting stories have emerged. The Financial Times has reported today that Nigel Farage has told his donors that he expects Reform UK to do an election deal with the Tories. The report describes how a donor claimed the Reform leader thought a pact with Kemi Badenoch’s
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When it rains for Rachel Reeves, it pours. This time it isn’t revelations about the now-Chancellor’s apparently plagiarised book or her false LinkedIn ‘economist’ claims or, er, accusations she misrepresented the state of the national finances. No, now her chess ability has come under scrutiny. A former junior champion has hit out at Reeves over
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Oh dear. It seems that the horror never ends for the Andrew formally known as Prince. Mountbatten-Windsor – as he must now be called – was formally stripped of his last remaining royal titles last night, as the anger over the Jeffrey Epstein scandal shows no sign of abating. And today it has got even worse
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It is David Lammy’s big announcement on juries today – so that means another outing for the Tory Trident, Robert Jenrick. The heat-seeking-missile of the Tory frontbench has been itching for a shot at his hapless opposite number, ever since the debacle over leaked prisoners at PMQs three weeks ago. So it was clearly with
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Well, well, well. The official review of the leaked Budget documents that circulated last Wednesday ahead of Rachel Reeves’s fiscal statement has been published – and its findings are significant. It transpires that the ‘inadvertent’ error that led to the OBR report going live ahead of time was a result of IT weaknesses. But more
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All is not well in Labour party at present. Prime Minister Keir Starmer has spent the morning defending his Chancellor Rachel Reeves and her autumn Budget, cabinet ministers are complaining to journalists that they were kept in the dark over the state of the nation’s finances and a group of Scottish Labour MPs are plotting
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Another one bites the dust. Now it transpires that the onetime deputy chairman of the Conservative Party, Jonathan Gullis, has defected to Reform UK. The former MP for Stoke-on-Trent North took to Facebook to announce his move, lamenting that the Tories have ‘understandably lost the trust of the British people’ before stating: ‘I believe only
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Oh dear. It seems that Rachel Reeves’ Sunday media round has done nothing to answer questions about whether she misled the country about the national finances. The Chancellor – or ‘the Chancer’ in the words of the Sun – has repeatedly denied lying about the size of the fiscal black hole in the run-up to
Yesterday’s release of immigration figures by the ONS didn’t make for particularly pleasant reading. While net migration had fallen to around 200,000 in the 12 months to June, much of this was down to an unusually high exodus of people, with 693,000 leaving the country over the same period. Many of those leaving were under
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Another day, another drama. On Thursday afternoon, it emerged that Sir Keir Starmer’s government were rolling back their commitment to change the ‘qualifying period’ for unfair dismissal from 24 months to day one. Now workers will have to have been in their job for at least six months to qualify, in a move that ministers
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The Chancellor’s Budget may have gone down well with Labour backbenchers, but its ‘smorgasbord’ approach has managed to rather annoy a rather lot of people – including, it appears, those resident in Gibraltar. The gambling tax reforms announced by Rachel Reeves have sparked concerns about the impact these will have on the overseas territory. A
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As if the Labour lot hadn’t leaked enough ahead of Rachel Reeves’s big Budget announcement, a slip-up at the OBR meant that the report the Chancellor was set to unveil became readily available, er, before she had made her speech. The OBR was quick to apologise over the leak and confirmed it had launched a
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Kemi Badenoch had a head-start in preparing her response to Rachel Reeves’s Budget after this morning’s OBR leak. It was an opportunity she made the most of. The Tory leader’s blistering response in the Commons tore what was left of the Budget apart. But it wasn’t just Reeves’ policies that Badenoch went after: the attacks
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To the Commons, where this afternoon parliamentarians have spent some time discussing the G20 and Ukraine. The Prime Minister updated politicians on his trip to the G20 summit in South Africa, while politicians focused on the Russian invasion of Ukraine given what has been widely interpreted as a Vladimir Putin-friendly peace proposal from the US.
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Under a shake-up of the legal system, it transpires that juries are to be scrapped in all cases except murder, rape and manslaughter. The majority of cases will be heard by a judge alone in new plans pushed by Justice Secretary David Lammy – in a move that goes much further than the suggestions of
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Of all the things the public might think Prime Minister Keir Starmer should apologise for, a TikTok dance is probably not top of the list. Yet that is exactly what the Labour leader has expressed regret over, after a visit to a primary school on Monday. The PM found himself being dressed down by the
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To the House of Lords, where it transpires that two peers are to be suspended after they were deemed to have breached lobbying rules. Undercover footage recorded by the Guardian caught Lord Dannatt and Lord Evans of Watford offering parliamentary services to clients who were hoping to lobby the government. The House of Lords’ standards
So much for a simple Chinese takeaway. In his never-ending search for growth, Sir Keir Starmer has finally alighted on the obvious answer: cosying up to the liberal-minded democrats of Tiananmen Square. The Prime Minister is expected to fly to Beijing in the new year, once the long-awaited Chinese super-embassy in Tower Hamlets secures planning
