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
Starmer Chameleon strikes again. Sir Keir hadn’t taken to the stage long in the BBC’s Question Time special last night before the issue of his tendency to U-turn cropped up. Turning to the trans debate and Starmer’s rather, um, checkered history on the matter, one audience member asked the Labour leader: ‘Three years ago you
Over the first four weeks of the general election campaign, Sunak has so far personally made his way around 37 constituencies across the UK. With less than two weeks to go until the national poll, the Prime Minister has only ventured out of England on three occasions, and made just four trips to non-Conservative held
Just how much worse can the Tory campaign get? With a fortnight to go until polling day, the party’s field director is now being investigated by the Gambling Commission. It’s a somewhat sub-optimal development for a campaign dogged by tortuous metaphors, D-Day disasters and torrential rain too. In such circumstances then, it is no surprise
Dear oh dear. Now it transpires that a second Tory election candidate is facing scrutiny over an alleged bet related to the timing of the national poll. Laura Saunders, the party’s candidate for Bristol North West and a former CCHQ staffer, is being investigated by the Gambling Commission – the second Conservative candidate to face
Good heavens. One of the many polls released today has suggested that Prime Minister Rishi Sunak could become the first sitting Prime Minister to lose their seat at a general election. The Savanta and Electoral Calculus poll for the Telegraph predicts that the Conservative party could be left with just 53 MPs – with the
Now they’ve gone and done it. The juvenile antics of the eternally brain dead Just Stop Oil will be familiar to readers by now – with the group recently diversifying from road blockages to defacing objects of cultural or historical significance in their misguided attempt to protect the climate. Still, the group may have outdone itself
As the election date draws ever closer, this morning it was the turn of Prime Minister Rishi Sunak to face callers on LBC’s phone-in. And as the questions rolled in, the PM found himself doing a rather lot of defending: of his decision to have the national poll in July, on his party’s plans to
It’s a day ending in ‘y’ which means that a political party somewhere is having candidate drama. This time it’s Sir Keir Starmer’s lefty Labour lot, who have had to drop their Aberdeenshire North and Moray East candidate over controversial social media posts about Russia and antisemitism. Oh dear… Andy Brown shared contentious posts about
Following last week’s manifesto launches, Mr S has been looking into the fine print. As part of Labour’s plans to reform the House of Lords, Starmer says that he now wants to forcibly retire British peers at 80 years old when – he believes – they will be unfit for public service. But Steerpike is
Are the Tories feeling the heat from Reform? Apparently so, if online adverts are anything to go by, with London-based Facebook users complaining of an increase in online adverts targeting Nigel Farage’s party. The latest example involves an advert which tells social media users ‘Vote Reform, Get Labour’ — a phrase trotted out regularly by
Uh oh. After multiple reports of controversial candidates, Reform UK boss Nigel Farage has announced that he is threatening a vetting firm with legal action. The party leader has accused the company, Vetting.com, of ‘stitching up’ Reform UK. Golly… In April, the Farage-founded party signed a £144,000 contract with Vetting.com on the agreement the firm
With only 16 days to go until the election – and today being the last day you can register to vote – election campaigning is heating up and political plans are coming under ever more scrutiny. This morning Sir Keir Starmer appeared on LBC to take questions from the public on Labour’s 2024 manifesto pledges
Humza Yousaf is back with a bang. Now the embattled politician has taken to the Grauniad’s opinion pages to write a fiery piece on ‘anti-Muslim hatred’. In an explosive entry, the ex-SNP leader claims that Muslims across the continent are ‘fearful’ due to ‘growing popularity and mainstreaming of the far right’. ‘It is increasingly difficult
Since the return of Nigel Farage, Reform UK has been going from strength to strength. Last week a YouGov survey for the Times saw the Farage-founded group overtake the Tories in the polls for the first time. Today JL Partners’s research has found that since the arch-Brexiteer’s comeback, Rishi Sunak’s popularity has dropped to pre-election
Another day, another drama. This time it involves a run-in between Labour peer Lord Cashman and the party’s candidate for Canterbury, Rosie Duffield – which has resulted in the Labour peer losing the whip over some rather controversial comments… Duffield, a vocal women’s rights campaigner who has received death threats over her stance on gender
Dear oh dear. Back to Scotland and the chaos of the SNP. Former health secretary Michael Matheson was suspended for 27 days and received a 54-day salary ban last month after he tried to use the public purse to cover his £11,000 iPad data roaming bill. Now it transpires that the Nat has accepted a
At long last, Boris Johnson has joined the campaign trail. With less than three weeks to go until polling day, the former prime minister has today urged voters to back Rishi Sunak’s wounded party – just hours after a YouGov poll revealed that support for Reform has overtaken the Tories for the first time. And
There’s less than three weeks to go until polling day and the TV debates are continuing to roll in. This week, we’ve seen party leaders Rishi Sunak and Sir Keir Starmer quizzed by Sky’s political editor Beth Rigby before being turned on by the audience. And while the Prime Minister had a rather more gruelling
Today’s a big day in the election calendar. This morning, Labour launched its official manifesto, while campaigners hit the three-week countdown until the big day. As even the Tories seem to have accepted that the 5 July will see a victory for Sir Keir and his Starmtroopers, one Labour candidate seems to be especially enjoying
Oh dear. It’s not been the smoothest of starts this morning for Sir Keir Starmer, who is in Manchester launching the Labour manifesto. As the Labour leader was introducing his party’s official election manifesto to swathes of supporters and reporters, he was rather rudely interrupted. A rather young protestor holding a banner emblazoned with the