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

Wednesday

Steerpike

The Sun backs Labour

From our UK edition

Talk about an eleventh hour endorsement. This afternoon, one long-anticipated announcement dropped less than a day ahead of the general election. The Sun newspaper has now officially backed Sir Keir's Starmer's Labour party – just hours before polling stations are due to open. Tweeting out an image of its front page splash, Rupert Murdoch's famed red top has officially given its seal of approval to Starmer's army this afternoon in just five words: 'Time for a new manager'.

Steerpike

Do the Lib Dems have an intolerance problem?

From our UK edition

Is the Liberal Democrat party really all that liberal? Mr S isn’t quite so sure – after speaking to an ex-Lib Dem staffer who is taking legal action against the party for ‘discrimination, harassment and victimisation’. The former caseworker, who is using the pseudonym Amelia Sparrow, was dismissed after three days of working for a Lib Dem MP for ‘dishonesty’ – yet believes it was down to pressure put on her boss after she didn’t keep schtum about her gender-critical views. How curious… Other staffers were less fussed about airing their views – reportedly labelling Baroness Hayter ‘transphobic’ and calling Joanna Cherry a ‘transphobe’.

Steerpike

JK Rowling slams David Lammy over women’s rights

From our UK edition

The Harry Potter author strikes again. After blasting Sir Keir in a recent Times column, this time prominent women's rights campaigner JK Rowling has hit out at Labour's shadow foreign secretary David Lammy over past comments he made on gender issues – and she's not pulling any punches. The renowned writer has reposted an old BBC Radio 5 Live interview with Lammy from a few years back, where the Labour man was being questioned on the trans debate. His interviewer Rachel Burden spoke of how women's rights activists have been accused of being 'dinosaurs' and 'hoarding rights, as though "rights" are some kind of pie with a finite end'.

Steerpike

Suella’s scathing attack on the Tories

From our UK edition

If there's one thing this election season hasn't been short on, it's surprises. Now, with less than 24 hours to go until polling stations open, former home secretary Suella Braverman has weighed in on her party's impending implosion with an extraordinary OpEd in the Telegraph. Blasting her own side, Braverman sets about a blistering attack on the Tories, lamenting that 'the writing [is] on the wall: it's over and we need to prepare for the reality and frustration of opposition'. Crikey. In a scathing entry, the former cabinet minister and Rishi Sunak critic raged about her party's decline in the polls. 'Our vote is evaporating from both Left and Right,' she wrote furiously.

Steerpike

Will Starmer parachute Harman into top equalities job?

From our UK edition

It's Election Day Eve and the likely victors are already planning for the future. Mr S wrote today about how Sir Keir's top team have been trying to cosy up to Donald Trump – but it's not just foreign policy they've been considering. Closer to home it transpires that Labour is considering appointing a new chair of the Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC) – and it might ruffle just a few feathers... Starmer's army want outgoing Labour veteran Harriet Harman to take on the top job at the equalities watchdog, the Times has revealed today. Currently the position is held by Baroness Falkner of Margravine. While her current contract is due to run out on 30 November, it was thought that women and equalities minister Kemi Badenoch would extend it if the Tories remained in government.

Steerpike

Trump campaign lead blasts Labour meetings as ‘fake news’

From our UK edition

Oh dear. As election campaigns draw to a close, Sir Keir Starmer has found himself under scrutiny at the eleventh hour. A Telegraph article about his ‘pragmatic’ approach to US relations that states Labour has been talking to Donald Trump’s team on a ‘daily basis’ has been slammed as ‘fake news’ – by none other than top GOP strategist and Trump’s own campaign manager himself. Oo er. The Telegraph piece states that ‘staff working for David Lammy, the shadow foreign secretary, have been in near-constant talks with Trump’s team for weeks, since he met the former president’s campaign manager Chris LaCivita in Washington in May’.

Tuesday

Steerpike

Deepfake porn site targets female politicians

From our UK edition

Just when you think the election campaign can't get any madder, it does. Now it transpires that a 'deepfake' porn site has posted a slew of doctored images bearing the likenesses of 30 female politicians – including deputy Labour leader Angela Rayner to senior Tory Penny Mordaunt. You couldn't make it up... The targets of the dodgy photos – produced using artificial intelligence – are not confined to one particular party. As well as Rayner and Mordaunt, an investigation by Channel 4 News found that outgoing Tory Dehenna Davison and left-wing Labour candidate Stella Creasey were also featured.

Steerpike

Labour will ‘destabilise’ Reform, Badenoch warns

From our UK edition

Election day is just around the corner and politicians across the country are pulling out the stops. Now Kemi Badenoch has taken to the fine pages of the Telegraph to urge voters not to back Reform – after new analysis splashed across today's papers (detailed by Katy here) suggests that 130,000 voters across 100 seats could result in a very different election outcome. The Business Secretary has opined on the threat posed by an incoming Labour government – which she suggests is Reform's favoured outcome. 'Reform leaders have been clear about their aim in this general election,' Badenoch writes. 'Not to win it, but to ensure that the Conservatives lose so badly that the party cannot recover.

Steerpike

Reform candidate called for Sturgeon to be shot

From our UK edition

Oh dear. Just two days to go until polling day and Reform is once again in the limelight after yet more controversial comments by a candidate have come to light. It transpires that the party's Orkney and Shetland choice, Robert Smith, is responsible for a series of damning social media posts – in which he takes aim at JK Rowling, Nicola Sturgeon and Ursula von Der Leyen amongst others. Between 2016 and 2023, Smith took to social media to post about a number of political and public figures using rather derogatory language. The Times reports that Smith targeted journalist and broadcaster Andrew Marr, Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer and London mayor Sadiq Khan using vulgar sexual language.

Monday

Steerpike

Will Starmer be a part-time PM?

From our UK edition

'Sir Sleepy', it seems, is back. On the eve of taking up the most important job in the country, Keir Starmer has revealed that he will refuse to work around the clock should his party win Thursday’s election. Speaking to Virgin Radio this afternoon, the Labour leader contrasted himself with the current premier, well known for keeping long work hours. Starmer, who has two teenage children, said that he 'will not do a work-related thing after 6pm [on a Friday] pretty well come what may.' He claimed that spending time with his kids 'takes me away from the pressure [and] relaxes me', adding that the time away from work made him a better decision maker.

Steerpike

JK Rowling slams Swinney over gender stance

From our UK edition

Another day, another drama. This time Scotland's First Minister John Swinney is in the spotlight, after he conducted a rather odd radio interview with BBC Five Live on the trans debate. With three days to go until the general election and some polls predicting Swinney's nationalists could lose more than half of their Westminster seats, the FM is under pressure to persuade more voters to back the SNP on the big day. The Nats are no strangers to being out of touch with the general public and one issue that exemplifies this rather well is the party's stance on self-identification.

Steerpike

Rory Stewart’s centrist squirm

From our UK edition

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 on how to fix the world's woes. With apathy and cynicism on the rise, the former Tory leadership contender suggested that one way of tackling the issue would be that age-old favourite, constitutional reform.

Steerpike

Jill Biden revealed as Vogue magazine cover star

From our UK edition

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 performance at the presidential candidate debate on Thursday. Talk about bad timing... President Biden stumbled and mumbled his way through his disastrous debate with Donald Trump last week – so much so that media outlets across the world questioned just how the President could remain the Democratic party's choice for the 2024 US election. Yet while Democrats across the country try to forget Biden's chaotic showdown, the First Lady seems determined to remind them of it.

Steerpike

Are the Scottish Tories facing a civil war?

From our UK edition

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 have been ‘badly let down’ by ‘disastrous errors from the top’. One MSP blasting campaigning efforts said that ‘no one involved in the leadership of the campaign should ever be allowed near one again’.

Steerpike

Nigel Farage turns on Marine Le Pen

From our UK edition

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, Liam Booth-Isherwood, yesterday disowned the outfit and backed his Tory rival instead. Now, as he battles to keep momentum up ahead of 4 July, Farage has distanced himself from fellow Eurosceptic Marine Le Pen. Following yesterday’s Reform rally – with 4,500 attendees in tow – the leader used an interview with Unherd to distance himself from Marine Le Pen’s Rassemblement National (RN).

Steerpike

Harington endorses Labour – after in-law backed Brexit party

From our UK edition

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 lineup however, in the form of one Kit Harington of hit TV series Game of Thrones. The Jon Snow actor was seen in a Twitter video shared by the party on Sunday telling viewers to back Sir Keir’s lefty lot. In his endorsement of Starmer’s army, a dressed-down Harington told the camera: One issue that is really important to me in this election is the climate crisis.

Sunday

Steerpike

Reform candidate ditches party over ‘racism and sexism’

From our UK edition

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 over allegations of racism. The former Farage man has instead decided to endorse the Conservative party, backing the Tory contender – Maggie Throup – in the election.

Saturday

Steerpike

Kemi Badenoch blasts Nigel Farage

From our UK edition

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 and that the conduct of some of their activists is 'horrific'. And Tugendhat – a Tory Remainer seen as being on the left of the party – is not alone. For Kemi Badenoch, the centre-right favourite to be the next Conservative leader, has today stepped up her attacks on Farage. The Business Secretary has previously displayed a wariness about engaging with the Reform leader – unlike rivals Suella Braverman and Robert Jenrick who would welcome him into the party.

Friday

Steerpike

Will Michelle Obama run? The runners and riders to replace Joe Biden

From our UK edition

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 the bookies’ favourites, with Mr S running an eye over their odds and likely chances come November against ‘The Donald’... Gavin Newsom - 10/3 (Getty Images) ‘You don’t turn back because of one performance’, said Gavin Newsom after last night’s debate. ‘What kind of party does that?’ He knows the answer: the kind of party that wants to win and thinks it’s more likely to do so with him at the help.

Steerpike

The New York Times turns on Joe Biden

From our UK edition

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, delivering a series of withering verdicts on the 81-year-old White House incumbent. 'Joe Biden failed at his key task,' began Josh Barro 'showing voters he’s still cut out for the presidency.' 'Biden cannot go on like this' declared Frank Bruni; Jamelle Bouie called him 'raspy and stumbling.' He 'looked ancient and sounded lost,' concluded Clinton enthusiast Michelle Goldberg. 'There will now be a new chorus of cries for him to drop out, and I’ll be joining it.