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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Is Labour’s war on the media finally over? After Mr S reported this week that journalists were jeered for asking questions at a Tony Blair event, relations between the party and the media appear to have warmed. As Ed Miliband and Ed Balls head north of the border to campaign with Jim Murphy, it fell to
From our UK edition
This week David Cameron invited Ukip voters to ‘come home‘ to the Conservative party. ‘Come with us, come back home to us rather than risk all of this good work being undone by Labour,’ he pleaded at a campaign event. However for all of Cameron’s talk, Labour sources claim that the Tories would be quite
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Forget the red lines in this election, it’s the yellow lines that Labour are having a daily struggle with. Yesterday it was there campaign bus, today it’s Ed Miliband’s motorcade. The vehicle was snapped flouting the law in Victoria this morning: A gas guzzling Range Rover for his security detail? Whatever happened to the Energy and
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Despite their leader playing the pious ‘not angry, but disappointed’ shtick at his press conference this morning, it’s not all po-faces over in Labour land after the Tories’ latest attack on Ed Miliband. ‘Lynton Crosby has literally had to go nuclear to distract from non-doms,’ chuckles a chirpy Labour source. Tory sources back this up, saying it was
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After Jenni Russell kicked off the ‘Two kitchen’ Miliband drama when she tweeted about his kitchenette, Mr S would have thought she might be keeping her mouth firmly closed when it came to the Labour leader. Ed Miliband’s kitchen is lovely. Daily Mail pix: the functional kitchenette by sitting room for tea and quick snacks. —
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Today Owen Jones has criticised Michael Fallon for using the term ‘stabbed in the back’ to describe what he thinks Ed Miliband would do to Britain over Trident. The Guardian columnist has gone so far as to say that the phrase is ‘anti-Semitic’. Michael Fallon’s “stabbed in the back” metaphor is deeply sinister. It is a
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Louise Mensch has never been one to hide her love for her former boss David Cameron. However, their relationship took a hit earlier this year when the Prime Minister’s decision to pay tribute to the late King Abdullah resulted in Mensch blasting Cameron on Twitter. Happily, the pair have since made up and Mensch is supporting Cameron in
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After Mr S revealed the angry note one disgruntled voter in Bedford put on their door after being bombarded with Labour campaign leaflets, election fatigue has now spread to children too. It’s not just Labour having a negative effect on the public; David Cameron appeared to have sent a child to sleep on a trip to the Sacred
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Ed Balls has gone to ground after his BBC interview surfaced from January undermining Labour’s big policy announcement on non-doms. So far his disappointing deputies Chris Leslie and Shabana Mahmood have been deployed to clean up his mess on the airwaves. With a limited degree of success. Mr S can reveal that this is no
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Labour have not had much luck in this campaign when it comes to buses. Leaving aside the brouhaha over the sexist ‘pink van‘, the travelling Miliband entourage and press pack were lucky not to get towed in Warwick today. The official Labour campaign bus spent the entirety of Ed Miliband’s speech on a double yellow.
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Today Ed Miliband has announced with all guns blazing that the Labour party will abolish non-dom status if they are elected in May. The party has labelled the current non-dom tax rules as ‘ridiculous’. However, according to an interview Ed Balls gave earlier this year, cutting it would ‘cost Britain money’. Even if this is the case Labour
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Oh dear – it looks like Labour’s new non-dom policy is unravelling already. Everyone knows that Ed Balls did not abolish non-dom status while in government because he knew that people would scarper. So it would lead to less revenue, less money from the rich – and, ergo, a greater share of the burden to
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When Ed Balls appeared alongside George Osborne on the Andrew Marr Show earlier this year, the Shadow Chancellor told viewers how much he wanted to have a TV debate with the Chancellor. Balls was so keen that he made Osborne shake on a debate live on air. ‘In fact I’d like to go further,’ he
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Salman Rushdie became embroiled in a literary row over the weekend after he rated a number of books on the website Goodreads thinking these would be private when in fact the information was viewable to the public. The Satanic Verses author’s list soon began to circulate online with many viewers aghast to read his mediocre three star rating of Harper Lee’s To Kill
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Could this photo beat Nick Clegg’s hedgehog photo call to be the strangest animal election campaign snap? Here Yvette Cooper and Labour’s candidate for Rossendale and Darwen Will Straw are posing on a pavement with a slightly flattened-looking dog under their hands. Handily, in the background, a girl carries a spare dog past, just in
From our UK edition
Labour have continued their bizarre war on the media with aplomb. As Mr S has reported in the past, pesky journalists that have the audacity to ask awkward questions are given the full hairdryer treatment from the audience at Labour’s set piece events. Today’s speech by Tony Blair was no different: This Tony Blair event
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According to a recent Ashcroft poll, Nick Clegg is on course to lose his seat in the general election. If he is ousted from Sheffield Hallam, the Deputy Prime Minister will follow in the footsteps of the Liberal leaders Archibald Sinclair and Herbert Samuel, who both lost their seats while leading the party. Clegg is of course keen
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With just five weeks to go till polling day, one happy voter in Bedford has had enough. Mr S suspects that it’s for the best if Patrick Hall, the Labour candidate for Bedford and Kempston, doesn’t pay a personal visit to this address.
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Last month the Supreme Court ruled that Prince Charles’s ‘black spider memos’ to government ministers should be made public. The decision comes following a ten year legal battle between Buckingham Palace and the Guardian, after Clarence House argued that the contents of the letters were private. With the release now impending, Max Hastings has offered a taste of what
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After Alex Salmond was outed as ordering pink champagne in not one but two interviews last week, naysayers were quick to ridicule the former Scottish First Minister for his lavish choice of tipple. However, Mr S has it on the highest authority that Salmond was guzzling in the name of the people. The rosé tipple, Mr S is told, is not