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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Oh Mandy. You came and you took and kept taking. For it is not just the Labour party wrestling with the fallout from the Peter Mandelson scandal. Global Counsel – the lobbying firm which he co-founded in 2010 with his former aide Benjamin Wegg-Prosser – is battling to cope with the wave of bad PR
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It’s all gone a little bit Pete Tong for Sir Keir and the gang in No. 10. No acts of seppuku have yet been committed – but it is surely only a matter of time before heads are offered up on chargers. Currently, it is Morgan McSweeney, the Downing Street chief of staff, who is
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With 91 days to go until the Senedd elections, Reform are polling second – so it’s probably about time that they actually unveiled their leader. At a press conference in Newport this morning, Nigel Farage produced not just one rabbit but two. First, there was the long-awaited defection of James Evans after his expulsion from
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It’s Wednesday so that means another ritual humiliation for Keir Starmer at PMQs. As his government limps towards the May elections, the weekly spankings by Kemi Badenoch often seem to blur into one. But this week’s session will stand out in the annals for the sheer torrent of criticism directed at Starmer over his decision
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It’s been a pretty terrible start to the week for the government. Amid mounting revelations from the Epstein files, the police are now probing claims that the former British ambassador Lord Mandelson committed misconduct in public office. Despite Mandy’s links to the disgraced sexual predator being already well-known in late 2024, Keir Starmer nevertheless still
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It is one of the staple headlines of British politics: Peter Mandelson has resigned. The ‘Prince of Darkness’ was sacked as US ambassador last September, but that has not stopped the flurry of stories about the alleged nature of his relationship with the disgraced financier Jeffrey Epstein. A further three million emails were published this
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Oh dear. It seems that Zack Polanski is not quite the smooth-talking mega-mind that some on the left thought he was. The Green leader has been out and about, desperately talking up his party’s chances in the Gorton and Denton by-election. But, having ducked the chance to stand himself, the native Mancunian seems to have
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It’s a day ending in ‘y’ – so that means another scandal for Keir Starmer’s beleaguered team. This time it concerns a lobbying firm run by an ex-Labour MP. Jim Murphy, the party’s onetime Scottish leader, now heads up Arden Communications which has lobbied Sir Keir’s administration on behalf of arms manufacturers, oil companies and
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Andy Burnham may not be standing – but at least we know one man who is. With only five weeks to go until the Denton and Gorton by election, the race is now on to find suitable candidates to win the Manchester constituency on 26 February. The Greens are due to unveil their candidate later
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The in-and-out movements of the Bravermans have been quite something to behold. This morning it was the turn of Suella to (finally) join Reform, with Nigel Farage confirming that he had been in on-and-off talks with her for a year. ‘I thought she’d already gone’, was the reaction from one Tory wag on the wet
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Poor old Andy and those sad eyes of his. The Mayor of Greater Manchester has had a pretty rotten day, being blocked by his own party’s ruling National Executive Committee (NEC) by some eight votes to one. His sole backer was Lucy Powell, whose candidacy for deputy leader was memorably likened to Lurleen to Burnham’s
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The Phoney War is no more. Former Labour minister Andrew Gwynne is on the brink of standing down as an MP, after losing the whip during last year’s WhatsApp group scandal. A by-election is therefore on the cards in Gwynne’s Manchester seat, potentially paving the way for the ever-ambitious local mayor Andy Burnham to return
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Another one bites the dust. After Kemi Badenoch expelled Robert Jenrick from the Conservative party in Westminster, it seems that her Welsh counterpart Darren Millar this week wants to get in on the act too. This morning he released a statement on X, declaring that he expelled James Evans MS from both the Welsh shadow
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Oh dear. Less than 24 hours after Keir Starmer did his big Hugh Grant act over Greenland, Donald Trump has decided to make the Prime Minister’s life eve worse. The US President has overnight turned his guns on the Chagos deal, which is currently in the final stages of parliamentary scrutiny. Trump wrote on Truth
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It seems that Kemi Badenoch isn’t done with Robert Jenrick just yet. Tonight she is set to meet Tory MPs from both the 92 Group and the Common Sense Group. But before that, Tory apparatchiks have sought to finish what she started on Thursday when she sacked Robert Jenrick from the Shadow Cabinet, expelled him
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So, who’s gonna be the next to go? The rate of Reform switchers has stepped out in recent days with both Robert Jenrick and Andrew Rosindell taking the plunge. But while elements of the Conservative parliamentary party seems to enjoy staging a performance of And Then There Were None, Kemi Badenoch is happier acting as
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It seems that Nigel Farage has not taken too kindly to all Kemi Badenoch’s talk of ‘cleaning house’. The leader of Reform UK has had his fair share of run-ins with different Tory MPs since being elected to parliament in 2024, even going so far as to call half of them ‘stuffy, boring old bastards’
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Leave it to Donald Trump to knock Robert Jenrick off the news cycle. The US President has not taken too kindly to the European contigent sent to Greenland, amid his continued threats to annexe the Danish territory. This afternoon Trump announced plans to hit the UK, Denmark and other European countries with a 10 per
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Can Keir Starmer get anything right? Just days after yet another U-turn on digital ID, it now seems that his flagship ‘Hillsborough law’ will provoke a Labour rebellion too. The bill is designed to impose a legal duty on public officials to act truthfully and support investigations into the state to ensure wrongdoing is not
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Oh dear. With the right in civil war, Keir Starmer might have thought his week was ending on a high, after yet another U-turn – this time over digital ID. But his loose-lipped cabinet have done it again, telling the Times that they believe Kemi Badenoch’s dramatic sacking of Robert Jenrick ought to serve as a
