David cameron

With Lord Ashcroft’s claim in today’s Daily Mail that David Cameron once enjoyed intimate relations with a dead pig, talk has soon turned to which unnamed Tory MP was the source of the story. With the incident allegedly taking place at an initiation ceremony for the Piers Gaveston dining society – which is named after Edward II’s alleged male lover — it has been suggested that one of Cameron’s Oxford university contemporaries could be the source. While Steerpike is yet to discover which MP is behind the Ashcroft tale, Mr S couldn’t help but remember that one Tory MP previously got himself into trouble for telling porkies concerning Piers Gaveston. When Boris Johnson was

A year ago today, Britain woke up to find the union saved – but only just. In 10 Downing St, the 45 per cent voting ‘yes’ looked like a victory, and the whole issue closed. I was in my hometown of Nairn that day, in the Highlands, where things looked rather different: after visiting pupils in my old school I wrote that, far from being closed, the debate had just begun. It wasn’t just the depressing closeness of the result, but the way the ‘no’ campaign had relied upon relentless negativity to make its case. As Joe Pike puts it in his fascinating account, the campaign ‘left a kingdom united, but

Nicola Sturgeon got one thing right this morning. A year on from the independence referendum, Scotland’s First Minister allowed that the plebiscite “invited us, individually and collectively, to imagine the kind of country we wanted to live in”. The answer, you may be surprised to be reminded, was Britain. Surprised, because it has since become commonplace to observe that the losers have become winners and the winners losers. Scotland, everyone agrees, is a changed place even though (almost) everyone agrees that the country would still reject independence were there another referendum next month. (The economic questions that hurt the Yes campaign so badly last year are, if anything, harder to answer

At the end of PMQs today, David Cameron turned to George Osborne and said, ‘Well, that was a lot less stressful.’ I think this conclusively answers the question of whether or not Cameron is worried by Jeremy Corbyn’s PMQs technique of reading out questions that the public have sent in. Although, to be fair, I hear that Cameron was impressed by how calm Corbyn was today, especially considering that it was not only his PMQs debut but his  first ever appearance at the despatch box. The Prime Minister remarked afterwards that the Labour leader’s hands weren’t even shaking as he asked his questions.

Many on the right have raised concerns that a Jeremy Corbyn led opposition could force the government to lurch more to the left in order to pick up votes from disillusioned Labour supporters. But with Corbyn already making waves by hiring a socialist shadow chancellor as well as a vegan shadow Defra secretary, will David Cameron take inspiration from their appointments? Judging by an article written by Cameron that was published today, they could be onto something when it comes to the environment at least. The Prime Minister has listed his favourite children’s book in a piece for the activity group Super Camps. He names Dr Seuss’s The Lorax, which tells the story of a boy —

Ahead of the general election, David Cameron used a fire metaphor to describe what he offered the nation in comparison to the chaos — he claimed — Ed Miliband would unleash on the country: ‘I feel like the firefighter, hosing down the burning building, and there’s Ed Miliband – the arsonist – saying “why aren’t you doing it quicker?”‘ Well, Miliband may be gone but the threat of fire certainly hasn’t. With Corbyn just three days into his leadership, rumours abound that many staff members may face the axe under the new regime. However, it was another disaster which caused Labour bods to flee their office this afternoon. Staff were evacuated from