Steerpike

If Brexit can’t be sorted out by mere mortals, perhaps the UK and EU need some divine inspiration to break the deadlock. That was perhaps what an Irish priest was thinking when he presented Taoiseach Leo Varadkar with a bottle of holy water this afternoon. But it seems Varadkar had other ideas about what to do

Students went on strike today worldwide to protest against climate change. Luckily, the London protest took place only a stone’s throw away from the Spectator office so Steerpike went down to Parliament Square to see what action the eco-protesters want taken as a country. Only, with signs ranging from ‘F–k Boris’ to ‘Defy Tory Rule’,

Is Jeremy Corbyn pro Remain or pro Leave? Three years have passed since the EU referendum, but the Labour leader still won’t answer that question. In an interview with ITV’s Joe Pike, Corbyn was asked eight times whether he now backed leave or remain. And eight times he refused to say: Joe Pike: “So are you

Jean-Claude Juncker, the outgoing President of the EU Commission was in fine spirits today, as he passed on some positive news for those hoping a Brexit deal will be struck by Boris Johnson before 31 October. The former Luxembourg PM was interviewed by Sophy Ridge for Sky News, and assured her that a Brexit deal with the

The Liberal Democrats have been going through something of a minor identity crisis as of late, after the party allowed the former Tory MP Phillip Lee to cross the aisle and join their ranks. Lee’s support in the past for checking migrants at the border for HIV, and his abstention on a key vote for

There have been plenty of revelations about David Cameron this week, from the time he questioned Michael Gove’s sanity to when he got ‘off his head’ on dope at Eton. But Mr S thinks our former prime minister might have saved the best admission until now. On ITV’s This Morning, Cameron was talking about how

Boris Johnson has just cancelled a press conference after being booed in Luxembourg, but was the Prime Minister set up? Luxembourg’s leader Xavier Bettel took a dig at Boris Johnson as he gave a short speech next to an empty lectern. Bettel said he ‘wanted to thank Boris Johnson’ as he pointed into thin air: But

Jo Swinson has said she will never forgive David Cameron for calling the EU referendum in 2016. ‘I think so many of the problems that we are facing right now stem from David Cameron’s shocking misjudgement in putting the interests of the Conservative party ahead of the national interest,’ the Lib Dem leader told her party’s

When Jo Johnson quit government, reports began to circulate that his wife Amelia Gentleman – the Guardian journalist – had put pressure on him to leave frontline politics and thereby not serve in his brother Boris Johnson’s government. The Sun reported that Gentleman had grown tired of ‘seeing Boris presiding over an increasingly fractured government,

There are plenty of ways to go about winning an election if you’re fighting to become an MP, from coming up with a winning electoral strategy, to tapping into a burning local issue. The one thing you probably shouldn’t do though is start off by insulting your local constituents. The North Devon Liberal Democrat candidate

Supporters of Brexit are often accused by their political opponents of having an unhealthy obsession with the past, and wanting to take the country back to an age when the British Empire spanned a quarter of the globe. But, if the Liberal Democrat conference is anything to go by, it appears to Mr S that it

So far, things have gone very smoothly for Jo Swinson since she was elected leader of the Liberal Democrats. The party has managed to increase its numbers in parliament and coalesced around a new hardline Remain position of revoking Article 50. Yet, there were signs today that all is not well with some Liberal Democrat