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
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The Tory leadership race is on and while it can be hard to keep track of the growing number of candidates entering the race, it is even trickier to stay on top of the lurid confessions of wrongdoing made by those who want to be PM. To help out, here is Mr S’s full and
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The Tory leadership race has taken on a new turn this weekend with the Daily Mail splashing on Michael Gove’s cocaine confession. The Environment Secretary tells the paper that he took the ‘drugs on several occasions at social events more than 20 years ago’. At the time, Gove was working as a journalist. Of the
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Peterborough’s new Labour MP has only just been elected but already she is finding herself embroiled in controversy. Lisa Forbes was taken to task in the early hours of this morning over a revelation that she once liked a Facebook post saying that Theresa May had a ‘Zionist Slave Master’s agenda’. Here is what she
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It’s fair to say that recent campaigns and elections haven’t been kind to Ukip. First, the party fell apart and crumbled following the EU referendum campaign, and now it’s suffering the indignity of seeing Nigel Farage’s newly formed Brexit party surge in the polls, while its own organisation is taken over by YouTube stars. But
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Camaraderie seems to be in short supply in Peterborough this week, ahead of the by-election tomorrow. In the centre of the city, a Brexit party activist cheerfully tells Mr S that he has barely seen the other parties knocking on doors and handing out flyers around the city. But he did run into the Labour
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It’s hard to think of a more relaxing place to sit than Cathedral Square in the centre of Peterborough on a sunny day. Yet beneath the calm exterior, a fierce battle is taking place here between the political parties hoping to win tomorrow’s by-election, to see who will replace the disgraced former Labour MP Fiona
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If it wasn’t already, Change UK is now surely on its last legs. Six of the party’s MPs – including leader Heidi Allen – have quit. But those left behind still remain defiant. In a Sky News interview, Mike Gapes – who defected from Labour earlier this year – said the party was alive and
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Over the weekend, Donald Trump endorsed Boris Johnson’s leadership campaign. Boris ‘would do a very good job’, Trump said. At today’s press conference, Jeremy Hunt was also backed by Trump. But one person who didn’t quite make it was Michael Gove. When asked about the Tory leadership contest, Trump had this to say: ‘So I
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Jeremy Corbyn has made much of snubbing Donald Trump by refusing to attend a state dinner in his honour, but was it really Trump who got the cold shoulder? At a press conference this afternoon, Trump has just claimed that Corbyn wanted to meet Trump, but that it was he who turned down the Labour
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Manners maketh man. If you are going to be a prince, moreover, politesse really should be paramount. Monarchy is, if nothing else, all about ancient codes of conduct: honour, chivalry, formality, and bloody well smiling at people you don’t necessarily like. That seems a bit much for Prince Harry, who, if reports and photos are
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Sam Gyimah, the former Minister for Universities who quit in protest at Theresa May’s deal, has become the thirteenth Conservative leadership candidate, announcing his decision live on air on Sky today. When asked by Niall Paterson if he would like to be the next Conservative leader, Gyimah replied “Well, yes. I will be joining the
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The message from the EU is clear: there will be no improvement to the deal rejected by Parliament. And if talks fail? Donald Trump today makes an offer: that the United States, the UK’s No 1 customer, is standing by with its own free trade deal. It needn’t take even a year, he says, as
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This week, Julia Hartley-Brewer joined the list of right-of-centre commentators to have found themselves ‘no-platformed‘ after a Twitterstorm. The Talk Radio host had been invited to join a Question Time-style panel discussion for the Royal College of General Practitioners (RCGP) on the ‘hot healthcare topics of the day’ – they said she was there as
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Trump and Boris; Boris and Trump – the two men have a lot more in common than funny hair, an appetite for women, and a magical ability to offend left-liberal sensibilities. But the hot question in Westminster at the moment is whether these two big beasts will meet when the American President visits London next
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Will anything end Nigel Farage’s winning streak? The Brexiteer famously walked into a Ladbrokes in June 2016 and placed a £1,000 bet on Leave winning the EU referendum campaign – a decision that pocketed him a tidy £2,500 sum. In April, ahead of the European parliament elections, the Brexit party leader decided to chance his
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As Tory leadership contender Rory Stewart roamed the districts of outer London yesterday, talking to unsuspecting members of the public about his bid to be Prime Minister, it’s probably fair to say that he had a number of unusual conversations along the way. But it seems that the oddest encounter he had wasn’t with an
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With twelve candidates so far declared for the Tory leadership contest, more MPs are expected to announce in the coming days. Those rumoured to be planning on throwing their hat into the ring include Mark Harper, Steve Baker and 1922 chairman Graham Brady. On Friday, Brady recused himself from a Conservative Party statement on the
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Alastair Campbell has been something of a Labour party fixture for the last twenty years – but not any longer. Blair’s former spin doctor has just been given the boot from the party for revealing that he voted Lib Dem at the European elections. Campbell said he was ‘sad’ and ‘disappointed’ to get an email
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Rory Stewart is emerging as something of a dark horse in the Tory leadership contest. But while the international development secretary is an impressive candidate he is not immune to making a mishap. Richard Madeley reminded him this morning of a particular low point for Stewart: his made-up ‘fact’ about Brexit –that 80 per cent
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There’s a lot of soul-searching in the Labour party after Sunday’s abysmal results in the European elections. On Monday, Corbynista commentator Paul Mason was one of the first out of the blocks, with a lengthy autopsy of Labour’s electoral failure. He placed the blame squarely on Corbyn’s Brexit-leaning advisors, and urged those responsible to be
