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
Dear oh dear. It now transpires that Starmer’s army will increase university fees in line with inflation from September next year, as announced by Education Secretary Bridget Phillipson in the Commons today. It’s the first hike to tuition fees in eight years after university payments have remained frozen at £9,250 a year since 2017 –
Well, well, well. It seems that the Guardian, the self-proclaimed bastion of ‘clarity and imagination’, has been acting rather censoriously of late. It transpires that, in a column navigating the world’s great whiskies by wine critic Henry Jeffreys, a reference to an Israeli single malt whisky was first removed from the print copy – before
Sir Keir Starmer’s Labour lot are desperate to get the press and public talking about anything but the Budget this week – and so the issue of Channel crossings is where the Prime Minister is focusing his attention today. Yvette Cooper was quizzed on the airwaves this morning ahead of the PM’s speech to Interpol’s
Three months after the Southport attack in July, suspect Axel Rudakubana has been charged with two new fresh offences. With his trial set to go ahead in January, there has been much comment in Westminster as to when the authorities were first informed. To try and make sense of the case, Steerpike has laid out
Taxes, thousands of ‘em! In her bid to alienate the bulk of the British electorate, it seems that Rachel Reeves can add another to her enemies’ list: film legend Sir Michael Caine. The Zulu star – a true working-class talent made good – used an interview this weekend to send a warning about the Budget
Poor old Robert Jenrick. He has spent eleven gruelling months touring associations, existing on a diet of Ozempic and rubber-chicken, only to lose to Kemi Badenoch by a double-digit margin on Saturday. Badenoch may yet offer Jenrick a role in her shadow cabinet. But if she doesn’t – or if Jenrick politely declines any such
With his super-majority in the Commons, Keir Starmer isn’t afraid of losing the odd MP or two. Back in July he was was willing to remove the whip off seven of his colleagues after they had the effrontery to dare vote against lifting the two-child benefit cap. So the case of Dawn Butler – the
So Kemi Badenoch is the new leader of the opposition. How best should Labour respond? One person who has shown the perfect example of what not to do is Dawn Butler, the gaffe machine otherwise known as the Honourable Member for Brent East. Shortly before the result was announced she shared a post on Twitter/X accusing
Will the last person to leave the Tory party please turn out the lights? After an exodus of Conservative MPs from their jobs before the election (75 of them decided to quit rather than contest) we found out at today’s leadership announcement, courtesy of Bob Blackman, chair of the 1922 Committee, that members have bolted
Happy Tory leadership results day! Much like teenagers collecting their A-levels, there will be plenty of tears, cheers and multiple beers, as one of either Kemi Badenoch or Robert Jenrick seizes the crown. But one person who might not be smiling this morning is Rishi Sunak, whose final morning as Conservative leader has been overshadowed
It’s Rishi Sunak’s final week as Tory leader, but should he be asked to carry on? On Wednesday he charmed the Commons at PMQs before stealing Rachel Reeves’s thunder with a virtuoso Budget speech. And now, in the final poll of his leadership, it transpires that the Conservatives have, at long last, overtaken Labour in
One of the key issues at play in this year’s July election was the matter of immigration. Sir Keir Starmer promised voters that his party would ‘cut immigration’ and yet this week alone more than 1,500 irregular migrants arrived on Britain’s shores. Much like with everything else, Brits are losing faith in Sir Keir’s government
It seems that the Budget isn’t going down terribly well in the City. Ministers have been out on the airwaves, desperately insisting that Labour’s borrowing plans are fiscally credible. Yet the markets don’t appear convinced, with the cost of gilt yields spiralling. Given the need to reassure the international financiers, it looks sub-optimal then that
Sir Keir Starmer’s Labour party has not had the easiest time in government so far – and last night’s local by-election result will have done nothing to raise spirits. Nigel Farage’s Reform UK party snatched a council seat from the Labour lot, taking over a third of the vote in Wolverhampton’s Bilston North ward. Starmer’s
Well, well, well. It’s day three of the Budget and it appears that Rachel Reeves’s fiscal statement has begun to rather quickly unravel. Appearing on Sky News this morning was Chief Secretary to the Treasury. In a rather awkward interview, Darren Jones faced a grilling from Sky’s Wilfred Frost on just how much people in
First, it was the Chagos Islands. Then it was David Lammy’s visit. Now many in Westminster are asking: when it comes to China, where does this government draw the line? In recent weeks it has been reported that Labour is both dropping plans to classify Beijing’s treatment of Uyghur Muslims as a ‘genocide’ and is
For most Brits, there was little to celebrate in Rachel Reeves’s fiscal statement – but that didn’t stop Treasury staff from toasting the Budget. Just hours after the Chancellor delivered her 80-minute speech to MPs on Wednesday, Treasury aides made the short hop across St James’s Park to Westminster’s Two Chairmen pub. From 4 p.m.
The first full day post-Budget has not been a happy one. While Labour’s spinners are hard at work trying to convince the nation – and themselves – that Rachel Reeves’s fiscal statement was a success, real people across the country are reeling from Wednesday’s announcement. Mr S wrote yesterday about how leading figures in the
Casting his mind back to the election, Mr S recalls a heated debate about which party would raise taxes most. In the final televised debate before the national poll, Sir Keir Starmer was quick to accuse then-PM Rishi Sunak of ‘repeating a lie’ – that Labour were going to raise taxes by £2,000 per person.
The SNP’s Dear Leader has not had the smoothest 18 months since her resignation last year – what with the police probe into SNP finances, the exodus of members from her party and the nationalists’ staggering loss of support in the general election. But it’s not all bad news for Nicola Sturgeon. It has now