Steerpike

Forget Tories4Corbyn, a new craze is taking hold of Conservative politicians across the country. With Jeremy Corbyn's popularity now at an all-time high, he has amassed a hoard of female fans who have described him as sexy in 'a world weary sea dog' sort of way. Now it seems the Tories too want in on the action. In a bid to look more like the man of the moment, David Gauke -- who is the current Financial Secretary to the Treasury -- has grown his beard out in the style of Corbyn. https://twitter.com/DavidGauke/status/630654189778137088 What's more, he's not alone; Ed Vaizey has also been taken in by the trend: https://twitter.com/edvaizey/status/630679359167332352 Perhaps the Tories should be worried about Corbyn after all.

Although much has been made of Andy Burnham's admission in an interview with GQ that he owns an Armani suit, perhaps the most embarrassing revelation lies further down. When asked for the Gentlemen's Quarterley's September issue who he would like to lead the Labour party if he doesn't win the leadership election, Burnham plays it safe and chooses a politician who is not even running for the coveted position: 'Alan Johnson is somebody that I think has that authentic Labour voice that the public can relate to, and somebody who embodies aspiration in a good way.' Pity then that Johnson came out in support of his rival Yvette Cooper just two days before its publication, when the magazine had already been sent to the printers.

In an interview with Sky News Australia, David Cameron's former election strategist Lynton Crosby has today offered his thoughts on the Prime Minister's rivals. Unsurprisingly, his conclusions are hardly flattering. However, the man who has taken the brunt of Crosby's ire is Nigel Farage. Crosby claims that Ukip does not have 'a long-term future'. Furthermore, instead of trying to win a Westminster seat again, Farage would be better advised to look for chat show work in Australia: 'They are very reliant on the performance of their leader Nigel Farage and even he couldn't win a seat. Sixth or seventh time he's tried to win a Westminster seat. I think he might be better coming to Australia and doing talkback radio than trying to run another seat in the UK.

Labour's verification process has been under a lot of scrutiny in recent weeks as more and more Tories have claimed they have successfully joined as a supporter of the party in order to vote for Jeremy Corbyn and 'condemn Labour to years in the political wilderness’. Labour insist that they have a crack team successfully weeding out non-Labour supporters from the genuine new joiners. This is a point that they seem rather keen to make known. Today the party's press office has tweeted the Tory MP Tim Loughton to tell him that his application has sadly been declined: https://twitter.com/labourpress/status/628912795862605824 While Loughton's actions have been criticised by members of Labour, former Tory MP Louise Mensch has also weighed in: https://twitter.

Jeremy Corbyn's Labour leadership bid has so far managed to inspire a legion of new supporters to join the Labour party. Alas, his unexpected popularity is also causing a problem for some members of the media. After the Guardian launched an in-house investigation into whether their own Corbyn coverage was bias against him, Emily Maitlis, who has interviewed him for tonight's Newsnight, has written a gushing blog post titled 'Prepping to meet "the man of the moment"'.  In it, she says that his tendency to veer off from textbook politician answers caused her a problem when preparing for the interview: 'On the train to Leeds my producer Ed Brown and I are putting together a list of questions for Jeremy Corbyn.

It's only lunchtime but the Guardian may have already reached 'peak Guardian' for the day. The paper has published an article penned by Chris Elliott chronicling an in-house investigation into their coverage of Jeremy Corbyn's Labour leadership bid. They decided to do this after a number of Corbynistas complained that the left-wing paper had shown bias against Corbyn, with one reader going so far as to claim that their reporting of his leadership bid was worse than the paper's coverage of the Vietnam war: 'I’ve been a regular reader of the Guardian (Manchester Guardian as was) since 1958. Despite the low point reached in the 60s when you supported the US war in Vietnam for a while, I still continued with it.

Although the Milifandom wasn't enough to lead Ed Miliband to victory at the polls, the cult movement did at least bring the former Labour leader's lagging campaign some momentum in the final weeks of the election campaign. So perhaps it's little surprise that the new Labour leadership hopefuls have been courting Milifandom founder Abby Tomlinson in a bid to win her endorsement ahead of the vote. After meeting with each contender, Tomlinson  has announced that she is backing Andy Burnham for leader. She says that she will give her second preference to Jeremy Corbyn -- who has won the most union endorsements as well as CLP endorsements.

Ahead of the election, Ed Miliband's senior advisor David Axelrod was asked if the Labour politician had as much potential to succeed as his former client Barack Obama. His reply? 'I think Obama’s a once-in-a-lifetime candidate.' However, could Labour leadership hopeful Jeremy Corbyn be the candidate to make it two-in-a-lifetime? Mr S only asks after the independent radical left magazine Red Pepper have ran a cover with Corbyn pictured in the style of the famous 2008 Barack Obama 'Hope' poster: https://twitter.com/montie/status/627109986339028992 Still, unless by 'hope' they are referring to what Corbyn brings to the Tories, Mr S suspects he still has some way to go.