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
It’s safe to say Nicola Sturgeon had something of a rough ride in her interview with Andrew Neil last night. The SNP leader was taken to task over her party’s record in Scotland. And in a blistering 43 seconds, Sturgeon was challenged over whether the NHS is safe in the SNP’s hands: ‘You haven’t hit
Michael Heseltine visited the Tory stronghold of Beaconsfield last night to support the recently ousted Conservative, now independent candidate, Dominic Grieve. During the event, which also saw Remain rebels David Gauke and Anne Milton take to the stage, Lord Heseltine was asked his advice to long-standing Conservative voters in the upcoming general election. Heseltine told
Labour’s Jeremy Corbyn had a tough message for rogue, profiteering property owners this morning. In an announcement calling for a ‘charter of renters’ rights’ – designed to protect tenants from landlords who rack up charges on properties in a state of disrepair – the Labour leader promised to ‘be on the side of tenants and take
Boris Johnson has launched his party’s manifesto in Telford this afternoon, joined by his Cabinet who were all confidently clapping away in the front row. All of them, that is, except for one Jacob Rees-Mogg. Eagle-eyed viewers will have spotted the conspicuous absence of the Leader of the Commons. Mr Rees-Mogg has been keeping a
Labour’s Shadow Education Secretary Angela Rayner took to the Andrew Marr Show this morning to discuss her party’s Brexit position. The veteran BBC interviewer questioned Ms Rayner on whether her party would campaign for their newly renegotiated Brexit deal if a future Labour government was to put it to the people. The Labour frontbencher decided
The Liberal Democrat leader had an awful time on Friday night’s Question Time special. The audience was, at best, uninterested in her pitch. A notable moment was when a Remain voter criticised the Lib Dems for their policy of revoking Article 50, calling it ‘undemocratic’. You can watch the clip below:
Labour’s manifesto wasn’t to everyone’s liking, but it has found one fan: Lily Allen. The pop star has released a video of her tearful reaction to Jeremy Corbyn’s blueprint for Britain. ‘It’s the best manifesto I’ve ever seen,’ she said, as she openly wept in a video posted to her Twitter account, Mr S has
The IFS has delivered its verdict on Labour’s manifesto and it’s not good news for taxpayers. Jeremy Corbyn’s party has claimed that 95 per cent of people would not pay a penny more for its radical plans to change Britain. But IFS director Paul Johnson says that’s nonsense: if the party introduced its manifesto, everyone
Labour has pledged to build 100,000 council homes a year as part of their so-called ‘housing revolution’. But how likely are they to fulfil that pledge? Normally, a party’s past performance is a pretty good indicator. So veteran interviewer Andrew Neil thought he might question the shadow chancellor John McDonnell on Labour’s council house building
Rebecca Long-Bailey promised a ‘gold star’ to the ‘well-behaved audience’ at Labour’s manifesto launch if they listened quietly. Unfortunately, they failed at the first hurdle. When the BBC’s Laura Kuenssberg was called forward to quiz Jeremy Corbyn, she was roundly booed by Labour activists. Here is the clip: ‘No, no, no, sorry. We don’t do
The Tories were accused of spreading fake news during the election debate after they changed the name of the official CCHQ Twitter account to ‘factcheckUK’. Now it seems they’re at it again. On the day of Labour’s manifesto launch, the Conservatives published their own version. Voters searching for Labour’s manifesto might reasonably think that they
Dawn Butler is no fan of Boris Johnson. But Mr S couldn’t help but notice the Labour MP’s apparent approval for the Prime Minister in the aftermath of last night’s ITV debate. Butler attacked Boris as ‘full of bluster’ but then added: ‘Boris Johnson talked about the NHS with compassion, he talked about nurses and
Boris Johnson and Jeremy Corbyn’s clash last night during the ITV debate was notable for its lack of standout performance from either candidate. The audience, however, provided a much-needed dose of reality for both leaders. Corbyn and Boris’s campaign soundbites were interspersed with bursts of laughter. Whether that was the result of amusement or frustration remains
Jo Swinson has branded accusations she fired stones at squirrels as ‘very fake news’. Screenshots of what appeared to be a Daily Mirror story have been widely circulated online. The article alleges that a private video of the Lib Dem leader has surfaced on Facebook, showing her pelting the furry mammals with pebbles using a slingshot. The Remain
On the Marr show this morning, Jeremy Corbyn was asked – and refused to say – five times whether he would campaign for Leave or Remain in a second referendum. Referring to himself in the third person, Corbyn said the only thing Corbyn could reveal was that we would have a close trading relationship with
John McDonnell today explained that the broadband nationalisation plans are perfectly affordable – upkeep costs would just be £230m a year. This was based on a report from the National Infrastructure Commission. It compared going for full fibre (the bars in blue, below) with incremental upgrades of the copper system (orange, below) and gave a
One of the strange things about this election is that the Conservatives could quite conceivably wake up on 13 December to find they have won a majority, but their prime minister has lost his job. In 2017 Boris Johnson only won his seat of Uxbridge and Ruislip with just over 5,000 votes, placing his constituency
Oh dear. It’s been a difficult week for Nigel Farage. The Brexit party leader announced on Monday that he would not be standing candidates in Tory-held seats. He had hoped that in return the Conservatives would consider standing down candidates in a number of Labour heartlands where he believed the Brexit party would fare better.
After being heckled and called a ‘terrorist sympathiser’ when he was out campaigning in Glasgow today, Jeremy Corbyn was presumably hoping for an easier time once he escaped the crowds outside. Unfortunately though, the Labour leader proved this afternoon that he is more than capable of causing his own gaffes. In a later interview with
Jeremy Corbyn has been heckled on the campaign trail in Glasgow by a passer by who accused the Labour leader of ‘running away’. Corbyn was giving an interview when he was asked: ‘Do you think the man that’s going to be the prime minister of this country should be a terrorist sympathiser, Mr Corbyn?’ The