Steerpike

Sarah Vine is famed for using her column in the Daily Mail to share embarrassing personal anecdotes about Michael Gove (often involving his underpants) and to offer deeply unhelpful advice to the Tory government. Today’s article is a case in point; it says that David Cameron's women problem is 'the biggest hurdle the Tories face'. The wife of the Education Secretary adds: 'as my husband is fond of saying, "Happy wife, happy life". And Mrs Electorate isn’t happy.' And Vine laid it on thick for Theresa May; suggesting that the Home Secretary 'looks more and more like the true heir to Margaret Thatcher.... whose tractor beam glare makes Anna Wintour’s seem positively Bambi-esque'.

All aboard Ukip's Common Sense battle bus! Today Nigel Farage's party took the fight to Portsmouth - or more precisely, Portsmouth and Southsea Station. It's not entirely clear what the station did to offend Ukip, but the party's battle bus accidentally collided with it while trying to execute a U-turn. Hopefully it's not an omen for what will happen when the party drives back over previous commitments made in its 2010 manifesto.

Ukip have suspended a member and Merton council candidate who appeared in their party political broadest, Andre Lampitt, for a series of 'repellent' tweets. Here are those offensive tweets, which have now been deleted, in full: Nigel Farage has said he is 'deeply shocked' by the tweets and has pledged to root out 'real extremism and nastiness' from his party.

If the French are flocking to Britain, it's not just down to a 75 per cent tax hike on the super-rich. Multi-millionaire designer, Jean Paul Gaultier comes to the UK for a different reason. “The British have a lot of connection with the sexual, which is something that I appreciate. None of this ‘No sex- we are British.’ It is more like ‘A lot of sex- we are British!’” The designer, who opened a retrospective exhibition in the Barbican this month, told Mr S that the French are “snobbish” and he comes to London to “to have fun”. “Britain represents iconoclastic creativity, individuality - things that we don’t know so much in France.” Tax that President Hollande.

Ukip is the Common Sense party that listens to ordinary people. So says Lizzy Vaid, who appears on the party's European elections manifesto as someone thrilled that Nigel Farage's party is 'listening to what people want'. She should know: although Vaid looks like she's an ordinary voter on the street, she is in fact Nigel Farage's assistant and Ukip's events manager. Well, it is Common Sense to vote for the party that employs you, after all.

Nigel Farage is feeling the heat after saying that the electricity bill for his 620 square foot office is over £3,000. According to Consumer Futures, the average household dual-fuel energy bill is £1,200 and that is for an average 1,042 square feet home, so one can see why he's under pressure. Farage went on to say that he runs lots of 'machines' in his tiny office. Henry de Zoete, the bright spark former special adviser to Michael Gove turned co-founder of energy campaigning group The Big Deal, points out an open goal to Mr S: 'Like millions of Britons, Nigel Farage is being ripped off by the Big Six energy companies. But it’s ok for him because the EU and British taxpayer are picking up the bill.