Steerpike

Steerpike

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

Friday

Steerpike

Sunak’s election tour: where has the PM campaigned so far?

From our UK edition

Over the first four weeks of the general election campaign, Sunak has so far personally made his way around 37 constituencies across the UK. With less than two weeks to go until the national poll, the Prime Minister has only ventured out of England on three occasions, and made just four trips to non-Conservative held seats. It suggests that he is is running a rather defensive campaign amid complaints that he has 'abandoned' the red wall. So where has Sunak gone so far? Though he has visited every region in the UK, the PM has preferred to stay in the South of England, making six visits to the South East and and eight to the South West. Of the Conservative-held seats which the PM has visited, the average has majority of just over 17,000.

Thursday

Steerpike

Labour candidates chafe at battleground obsession

From our UK edition

Just how much worse can the Tory campaign get? With a fortnight to go until polling day, the party's field director is now being investigated by the Gambling Commission. It's a somewhat sub-optimal development for a campaign dogged by tortuous metaphors, D-Day disasters and torrential rain too. In such circumstances then, it is no surprise that the party is now reportedly fighting an ultra-defensive campaign to shore up its vote in its southern safe seats. Yet with Sunak now spending much of his time touring seats with majorities of 15,000 or more, there is some confusion and irritation within Labour at the party high command's focus on so-called 'battleground' seats. Analysis by LabourList suggests that there are more than 250 of these across the country.

Steerpike

Tory duo probed in election betting claims

From our UK edition

Dear oh dear. Now it transpires that a second Tory election candidate is facing scrutiny over an alleged bet related to the timing of the national poll. Laura Saunders, the party's candidate for Bristol North West and a former CCHQ staffer, is being investigated by the Gambling Commission – the second Conservative candidate to face questions on bets in so many weeks. Mr S understands that it is not currently known when the alleged bet was placed – or for how much money. Saunders has worked in the Tory party since 2015 and was most recently involved in the International Division of CCHQ, which works with a range of political parties across the world.

Wednesday

Steerpike

Sunak on course to lose seat, predicts poll

From our UK edition

Good heavens. One of the many polls released today has suggested that Prime Minister Rishi Sunak could become the first sitting Prime Minister to lose their seat at a general election. The Savanta and Electoral Calculus poll for the Telegraph predicts that the Conservative party could be left with just 53 MPs – with the party leader not being one of them. Crikey. The Telegraph's MRP poll – which concluded the Tories are on course to face overwhelming defeat from a disillusioned electorate – surveyed approximately 18,000 people from 7-18 June. It concluded that Sunak is predicted to lose his Richmond seat to Sir Keir's Labour party – although the survey suggests that the contest for the seat will be a close one.

Steerpike

Watch: Just Stop Oil deface Stonehenge

From our UK edition

Now they’ve gone and done it. The juvenile antics of the eternally brain dead Just Stop Oil will be familiar to readers by now – with the group recently diversifying from road blockages to defacing objects of cultural or historical significance in their misguided attempt to protect the climate. Still, the group may have outdone itself his time. Just Stop Oil have just released a video of members of the group spraying Stonehenge with orange paint, as part of the trust-fund fight against climate change. To their immense credit, members of the public can be seen trying to protect the monoliths, which are over 4,000 years old, from this pig-headed historical vandalism. Unfortunately, they were not able to prevent the stones from being defaced.

Steerpike

Watch: Sunak hits out at defector donor

From our UK edition

As the election date draws ever closer, this morning it was the turn of Prime Minister Rishi Sunak to face callers on LBC's phone-in. And as the questions rolled in, the PM found himself doing a rather lot of defending: of his decision to have the national poll in July, on his party's plans to introduce national service for 18 year olds and of his, um, predilection for Haribos. On public trust, LBC introduced a rather novel way of measuring voters' faith in their potential leaders. Sunak was told by presenter Nick Ferrari that 60 per cent of people would rather Sir Keir Starmer be their GP than the PM – and this figure increased to two-thirds when voters were asked who they'd prefer as their lawyer in court.

Steerpike

Labour ditches Scottish candidate over ‘pro-Russian’ posts

From our UK edition

It's a day ending in 'y' which means that a political party somewhere is having candidate drama. This time it's Sir Keir Starmer's lefty Labour lot, who have had to drop their Aberdeenshire North and Moray East candidate over controversial social media posts about Russia and antisemitism. Oh dear... Andy Brown shared contentious posts about the 2018 Salisbury poisonings, in which the nerve agent Novichok was used in an attempt to take the lives of former spy Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia. The links shared by the ex-Labour candidate raised doubts about Putin's involvement in the attack and suggested that the life-threatening nerve agent did not come from Russia.

Steerpike

Why does Labour want to ban these 15 peers?

From our UK edition

Following last week’s manifesto launches, Mr S has been looking into the fine print. As part of Labour’s plans to reform the House of Lords, Starmer says that he now wants to forcibly retire British peers at 80 years old when – he believes – they will be unfit for public service. But Steerpike is rather sceptical of how Sir Keir's grand plans will go down with the second chamber, given the Labour leader will be turfing out some rather high-calibre comrades.  Labour's manifesto states that 'at the end of the parliament in which a member reaches 80 years of age, they will be required to retire from the House of Lords'.

Tuesday

Steerpike

Revealed: Tory member behind anti-Reform attack ad firm

From our UK edition

Are the Tories feeling the heat from Reform? Apparently so, if online adverts are anything to go by, with London-based Facebook users complaining of an increase in online adverts targeting Nigel Farage’s party. The latest example involves an advert which tells social media users ‘Vote Reform, Get Labour’ — a phrase trotted out regularly by numerous Tory politicians. Facebook rules say that when an advert is about ‘social issues, elections or politics’, those paying for the adverts ‘are required to disclose who paid for the ad’. In this case, the advertiser has been listed as ‘3rd Party Ltd’. On 3rd Party Ltd’s website, the organisation says it is registered with the Electoral Commission as a ‘non-party campaigner’.

Steerpike

Farage threatens vetting company with legal action

From our UK edition

Uh oh. After multiple reports of controversial candidates, Reform UK boss Nigel Farage has announced that he is threatening a vetting firm with legal action. The party leader has accused the company, Vetting.com, of ‘stitching up’ Reform UK. Golly… In April, the Farage-founded party signed a £144,000 contract with Vetting.com on the agreement the firm would flag up unsuitable parliamentary candidates with extreme views. The vetting company is owned by Sphinx Technology Ltd – which is in turn co-owned by Colin Bloom, an ex-Tory adviser who worked under Boris Johnson and who was made a CBE by the former Conservative party leader last year. Reform was assured at the time that despite Bloom’s background there would be no conflict of interest in Vetting.

Steerpike

Starmer flounders on phone-in over private schools and Corbyn

From our UK edition

With only 16 days to go until the election – and today being the last day you can register to vote – election campaigning is heating up and political plans are coming under ever more scrutiny. This morning Sir Keir Starmer appeared on LBC to take questions from the public on Labour's 2024 manifesto pledges – but it wasn't all plain sailing. On Labour's plans to add VAT onto private school fees, Michelle, a headteacher of a specialist school, phoned in to ask about her pupils, all of whom have diagnosed special educational needs. She told Sir Keir: 30 per cent don't have an educational healthcare plan to exempt them from the VAT charge and would be forced into the state sector where we know that their needs cannot be met.

Monday

Steerpike

Humza Yousaf attacks Farage and Braverman

From our UK edition

Humza Yousaf is back with a bang. Now the embattled politician has taken to the Grauniad’s opinion pages to write a fiery piece on ‘anti-Muslim hatred’. In an explosive entry, the ex-SNP leader claims that Muslims across the continent are ‘fearful’ due to ‘growing popularity and mainstreaming of the far right’. 'It is increasingly difficult to persuade fellow Muslims that Europe does not have a problem with our very existence,’ he notes. In 2024, almost half the world’s population will take part in elections. Many countries have already gone to the polls, and in a number of countries, particularly across Europe, the biggest gains have been made by those who make a living out of vilifying Muslims.

Steerpike

Reform candidate defends Hitler remarks

From our UK edition

Since the return of Nigel Farage, Reform UK has been going from strength to strength. Last week a YouGov survey for the Times saw the Farage-founded group overtake the Tories in the polls for the first time. Today JL Partners’s research has found that since the arch-Brexiteer’s comeback, Rishi Sunak’s popularity has dropped to pre-election lows. But it’s not all been plain sailing for Reform UK. Now the party's Welwyn Hatfield candidate has come under fire for comments he made in relation to a pseudoscientific theory about multiple personality types – in which he described Adolf Hitler as ‘brilliant’ and ‘able to inspire people to action’. Oh dear… And there's more.

Steerpike

Labour peer suspended over Duffield tweets

From our UK edition

Another day, another drama. This time it involves a run-in between Labour peer Lord Cashman and the party's candidate for Canterbury, Rosie Duffield – which has resulted in the Labour peer losing the whip over some rather controversial comments... Duffield, a vocal women’s rights campaigner who has received death threats over her stance on gender issues, announced on Friday that she will withdraw from election hustings events due to safety concerns. Blasting ‘constant trolling, spite and misrepresentation’, she revealed she was ‘being pursued with a new vigour during this election’, before concluding that ‘sadly the actions of a few fixated people has made my attendance impossible’.

Steerpike

iPad scandal MSP accepts £12,000 ‘golden goodbye’

From our UK edition

Dear oh dear. Back to Scotland and the chaos of the SNP. Former health secretary Michael Matheson was suspended for 27 days and received a 54-day salary ban last month after he tried to use the public purse to cover his £11,000 iPad data roaming bill. Now it transpires that the Nat has accepted a £12,000 ‘golden goodbye’ despite his suspension. Talk about shameless… Although the former minister was hit with one of the harshest punishments that Holyrood’s standards committee has ever dished out, it turns out that Matheson has still accepted £12,712.25 of resettlement grant money.

Friday

Steerpike

Boris backs Sunak sceptic

From our UK edition

At long last, Boris Johnson has joined the campaign trail. With less than three weeks to go until polling day, the former prime minister has today urged voters to back Rishi Sunak's wounded party – just hours after a YouGov poll revealed that support for Reform has overtaken the Tories for the first time. And no stranger to internal party politics, Johnson raised eyebrows this morning when he publicly backed Sir Simon Clarke in a short video. This is, after all, the MP who was so disillusioned by Sunak's leadership that at the start of the year he took to the pages of the Telegraph to urge the PM to quit. Back in January, Clarke called for Sunak's resignation, before warning the party was on track for an electoral 'massacre'.

Steerpike

Watch: Starmer slams audience for ‘disrespect’ over ‘toolmaker’ jibes

From our UK edition

There's less than three weeks to go until polling day and the TV debates are continuing to roll in. This week, we've seen party leaders Rishi Sunak and Sir Keir Starmer quizzed by Sky's political editor Beth Rigby before being turned on by the audience. And while the Prime Minister had a rather more gruelling time in the hands of the crowd, it's Sir Keir who's still moaning about it. In an interview with GB News's political editor Christopher Hope, the Labour leader hit out at audience member who laughed at him when he spoke of his parents' jobs. The first groan of the night rang through the hall when Sir Keir spoke of how his sister and mother had worked for the NHS. And when the inevitable line came – 'my dad was a toolmaker' – onlookers could hardly contain themselves.

Thursday

Steerpike

Watch: Dawn Butler’s bizarre campaign rap

From our UK edition

Today's a big day in the election calendar. This morning, Labour launched its official manifesto, while campaigners hit the three-week countdown until the big day. As even the Tories seem to have accepted that the 5 July will see a victory for Sir Keir and his Starmtroopers, one Labour candidate seems to be especially enjoying herself on the election trail. Dawn Butler, standing in new constituency Brent East, is ramping up her campaigning as polling day looms ever closer. Taking a leaf out of the SNP's book – after Falkirk candidate Toni Giugliano created a Spotify song in an attempt to woo voters – Butler has decided that the best way to convince her constituents that she's their woman is to release an, um, rap video. It's certainly one way to get noticed...

Steerpike

Watch: Sir Keir heckled at Labour manifesto launch

From our UK edition

Oh dear. It’s not been the smoothest of starts this morning for Sir Keir Starmer, who is in Manchester launching the Labour manifesto. As the Labour leader was introducing his party’s official election manifesto to swathes of supporters and reporters, he was rather rudely interrupted. A rather young protestor holding a banner emblazoned with the words: ‘Youth Deserves Better’ was the culprit. Slamming Starmer’s ‘change’ agenda, she raged: We have been let down by the Labour Party and this manifesto. You say that you’re offering change but it’s the same old Tory policies. We need better. Ouch... Sir Keir retorted that ‘we gave up being a party of protest five years ago’ — before the young woman was forcibly removed by security.

Steerpike

Salmond wages war on STV

From our UK edition

Uh oh. Back to Scotland where, for once, the chaos doesn't concern the country's biggest nationalist party. This time Alex Salmond’s pro-independence group, Alba, is in the spotlight over a rather public debacle with Scottish broadcasters STV. Salmond has taken issue with STV’s decision to move his party’s election broadcast slot from this Friday – the same day Scotland will play Germany in the Euros – to next week. The broadcaster changed the timings over concerns that the party would have an 'unfair advantage' if the screening went out before or after the game – to which Alba have responded by sending out a number of fiery press releases that demand STV be taken to 'Ofcom's election court' and shown the ‘red card’. Goodness...