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
With three days to go until 4 July, who else would you want to hear from but Rory Stewart? Cometh the hour, cometh the king of the centrist dads as the ex-cabinet minister today temporarily swapped his podcast for Times Radio. Appearing on Andrew Neil’s show this afternoon, Stewart was asked to give his thoughts
Oh dear. Vogue magazine’s August cover dropped this morning and it transpires that its editorial team has decided on a rather curious cover star in the form of, er, Jill Biden. The First Lady has been revealed as the central focus of the summer cover a mere four days after her husband gave a pitiful
Uh oh. All is not well within the Scottish Conservative party and just days before polling day, senior figures have dubbed the election campaign ‘the most inept [and] shambolic’ in the party’s history – called for a clear-out of the party hierarchy. Good heavens. Senior party figures have told the Times that Scottish Tory candidates
Ooh la la! After a tricky few weeks for Reform UK, leader Nigel Farage has aimed his sights towards the old enemy. Reform’s polling figures first dipped following that Nick Robinson interview and in recent days Farage has faced serious questions over the behaviour of both candidates and activists. The party’s former candidate in Erewash,
With the general election just three days away, the celebrity endorsements have started to roll in. Now Dragon’s Den judge Deborah Meaden, singer-songwriter Elton John and comedian Jason Manford have come out for Labour – all with snappy video messages gushing praise on the party. Steerpike has spotted one rather interesting addition to the celeb
Another day, another election campaign drama. Now it’s Nigel Farage’s Reform UK party in the limelight with more candidate controversy. Only this time it’s not the party defending contentious comments. Instead, one of the party’s candidates has turned on Reform. Oo er. Liam Booth-Isherwood, formerly a Reform candidate for Erewash, has today disowned the party
With a week to go until polling day, the Tories are stepping up their attacks on Reform. Following Channel 4’s programme on Thursday, the Security Minister Tom Tugendhat has taken to the airwaves. Speaking to Times Radio today he warned that ‘there is a real pattern of racist and misogynistic views’ in Nigel Farage’s pattern
After a lamentable performance in Thursday’s debate, much of the Democrat press corps is demanding that Joe Biden step aside. Last night, the New York Times ‘Editorial Board’ said that, ‘to serve his country’, the President must go. If the octogenarian President were to throw in the towel, who could possibly replace him? Below are
Politics is a fickle business. One day, the idea that Joe Biden is unfit to be president is heresy; the next it is progressive orthodoxy. No greater example of this can be found than in the comment pages of the New York Times. Overnight, the great-and-the-good of liberal opinion has turned on their former hero,
When you’re in a hole, stop digging. It seems that those words of wisdom aren’t being heeded by Reform as the party battles to handle the fall-out from last night’s Channel 4 exposé. The broadcaster released an undercover report into the party’s campaign in Clacton, featuring examples of anti-migrant rhetoric, homophobia and one canvasser called
Most presidential debates tend to be underwhelming but last night certainly was not one of them. Much of the subsequent coverage focused on Joe Biden’s hesitant, stumbling performance, prompting Donald Trump at one stage to remark that ‘I really don’t know what he said at the end of that sentence. I don’t think he knows
Can Joe Biden cling on? That’s the question being asked in Washington DC after a painful performance from the US President in the first debate of the contest. While there’s still plenty of time between now and the November election debate, even dedicated Democrats are struggling to shrug off Biden’s performance. There’s already talk that
After storming out of the blocks at the beginning of this campaign, polls suggest that Reform’s support has now tailed off slightly in the past week. So what’s the reason for this? Nigel Farage himself suggested to ITV yesterday that he had been ‘wilfully misinterpreted’ over his Ukraine comments but added that: ‘I think the
Oh dear. The Democrats are reeling from Joe Biden’s disastrous performance in the first presidential debate of the election. After the US president stopped and started, looked puzzled and struggled to answer questions, commentators are out in force suggesting Biden is not fit for a second term. Yet this time something has changed. It’s not
The Greens like to portray themselves as the party of hope and change. But what exactly does that entail? An enlightening answer perhaps comes from Joe Taylor, the Green candidate for Battersea. In his zeal to save the planet, he advocates using legal action against those whom he holds responsible for climate change. But not
Uh oh. On the same day that Prime Minister Rishi Sunak announced his party would be dropping the two Tory candidates caught up in the election betting scandal, now Labour is facing problems of its own. It transpires that Sir Keir Starmer’s party has suspended Central Suffolk and North Ipswich candidate Kevin Craig after the
With only nine days left until the general election, tensions are flying high and parties are under more scrutiny than ever. Labour’s muddled messaging on the gender debate has ignited heated discussions on the treatment of gender-critical feminists by Sir Keir Starmer’s party – namely one of his own colleagues Rosie Duffield – and has
As the election campaigns continue to pick up pace ahead of the national poll in nine days’ time, Mr S has been digging into some of the problems facing voters across the country. One issue stood out: crime. Sir Keir’s party has insisted it will cut down on antisocial behaviour and has this morning pledged to
Following JK Rowling’s rather scathing attack on Sir Keir’s Labour party on Sunday, some in Starmer’s army have been grovelling for the author’s support since. But Rowling isn’t prepared to let them off the hook that easily… After Rowling slammed Starmer’s lot for the party’s ‘dismissive and often offensive’ approach to concerns of gender-critical feminists,
Another day, another election mishap. This time it’s Reform UK under fire after one of the party’s candidates was found to have made pro-Putin comments during a hustings. Julian Malins KC, Reform’s Salisbury candidate, was booed at a recent election event after declaring that Putin ‘seemed very good’. Oo er. Asked by an audience member