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
Oh dear. As election campaigns draw to a close, Sir Keir Starmer has found himself under scrutiny at the eleventh hour. A Telegraph article about his ‘pragmatic’ approach to US relations that states Labour has been talking to Donald Trump’s team on a ‘daily basis’ has been slammed as ‘fake news’ – by none other
Just when you think the election campaign can’t get any madder, it does. Now it transpires that a ‘deepfake’ porn site has posted a slew of doctored images bearing the likenesses of 30 female politicians – including deputy Labour leader Angela Rayner to senior Tory Penny Mordaunt. You couldn’t make it up… The targets of
Election day is just around the corner and politicians across the country are pulling out the stops. Now Kemi Badenoch has taken to the fine pages of the Telegraph to urge voters not to back Reform – after new analysis splashed across today’s papers (detailed by Katy here) suggests that 130,000 voters across 100 seats
Oh dear. Just two days to go until polling day and Reform is once again in the limelight after yet more controversial comments by a candidate have come to light. It transpires that the party’s Orkney and Shetland choice, Robert Smith, is responsible for a series of damning social media posts – in which he
‘Sir Sleepy’, it seems, is back. On the eve of taking up the most important job in the country, Keir Starmer has revealed that he will refuse to work around the clock should his party win Thursday’s election. Speaking to Virgin Radio this afternoon, the Labour leader contrasted himself with the current premier, well known
Another day, another drama. This time Scotland’s First Minister John Swinney is in the spotlight, after he conducted a rather odd radio interview with BBC Five Live on the trans debate. With three days to go until the general election and some polls predicting Swinney’s nationalists could lose more than half of their Westminster seats,
With three days to go until 4 July, who else would you want to hear from but Rory Stewart? Cometh the hour, cometh the king of the centrist dads as the ex-cabinet minister today temporarily swapped his podcast for Times Radio. Appearing on Andrew Neil’s show this afternoon, Stewart was asked to give his thoughts
Oh dear. Vogue magazine’s August cover dropped this morning and it transpires that its editorial team has decided on a rather curious cover star in the form of, er, Jill Biden. The First Lady has been revealed as the central focus of the summer cover a mere four days after her husband gave a pitiful
Uh oh. All is not well within the Scottish Conservative party and just days before polling day, senior figures have dubbed the election campaign ‘the most inept [and] shambolic’ in the party’s history – called for a clear-out of the party hierarchy. Good heavens. Senior party figures have told the Times that Scottish Tory candidates
Ooh la la! After a tricky few weeks for Reform UK, leader Nigel Farage has aimed his sights towards the old enemy. Reform’s polling figures first dipped following that Nick Robinson interview and in recent days Farage has faced serious questions over the behaviour of both candidates and activists. The party’s former candidate in Erewash,
With the general election just three days away, the celebrity endorsements have started to roll in. Now Dragon’s Den judge Deborah Meaden, singer-songwriter Elton John and comedian Jason Manford have come out for Labour – all with snappy video messages gushing praise on the party. Steerpike has spotted one rather interesting addition to the celeb
Another day, another election campaign drama. Now it’s Nigel Farage’s Reform UK party in the limelight with more candidate controversy. Only this time it’s not the party defending contentious comments. Instead, one of the party’s candidates has turned on Reform. Oo er. Liam Booth-Isherwood, formerly a Reform candidate for Erewash, has today disowned the party
With a week to go until polling day, the Tories are stepping up their attacks on Reform. Following Channel 4’s programme on Thursday, the Security Minister Tom Tugendhat has taken to the airwaves. Speaking to Times Radio today he warned that ‘there is a real pattern of racist and misogynistic views’ in Nigel Farage’s pattern
After a lamentable performance in Thursday’s debate, much of the Democrat press corps is demanding that Joe Biden step aside. Last night, the New York Times ‘Editorial Board’ said that, ‘to serve his country’, the President must go. If the octogenarian President were to throw in the towel, who could possibly replace him? Below are
Politics is a fickle business. One day, the idea that Joe Biden is unfit to be president is heresy; the next it is progressive orthodoxy. No greater example of this can be found than in the comment pages of the New York Times. Overnight, the great-and-the-good of liberal opinion has turned on their former hero,
When you’re in a hole, stop digging. It seems that those words of wisdom aren’t being heeded by Reform as the party battles to handle the fall-out from last night’s Channel 4 exposé. The broadcaster released an undercover report into the party’s campaign in Clacton, featuring examples of anti-migrant rhetoric, homophobia and one canvasser called
Most presidential debates tend to be underwhelming but last night certainly was not one of them. Much of the subsequent coverage focused on Joe Biden’s hesitant, stumbling performance, prompting Donald Trump at one stage to remark that ‘I really don’t know what he said at the end of that sentence. I don’t think he knows
Can Joe Biden cling on? That’s the question being asked in Washington DC after a painful performance from the US President in the first debate of the contest. While there’s still plenty of time between now and the November election debate, even dedicated Democrats are struggling to shrug off Biden’s performance. There’s already talk that
After storming out of the blocks at the beginning of this campaign, polls suggest that Reform’s support has now tailed off slightly in the past week. So what’s the reason for this? Nigel Farage himself suggested to ITV yesterday that he had been ‘wilfully misinterpreted’ over his Ukraine comments but added that: ‘I think the
Oh dear. The Democrats are reeling from Joe Biden’s disastrous performance in the first presidential debate of the election. After the US president stopped and started, looked puzzled and struggled to answer questions, commentators are out in force suggesting Biden is not fit for a second term. Yet this time something has changed. It’s not