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

Monday

Steerpike

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

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

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

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

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

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

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...

Steerpike

Watch: Farage’s plans to reunite the right

There may only be three weeks of election season left but there's still a new development every day. Now Nigel Farage has made waves on the airwaves this morning in conversation with LBC’s Nick Ferrari. Quizzed about what the future if the opposition could look like, the Reform party leader hinted he was open to a new kind of cross-party working... 'I've intervened,' he told Ferrari, 'because we need a coherent voice of opposition in parliament and in the country. Do you know what, Nick? I believe I can do that better than the current Conservative party.' His interviewer pressed him again: Ferrari: Can you tell me that one day you might lead the Conservative party or can you rule it out if the ball were to come out of the back of the scrum?

Wednesday

Steerpike

Sunak’s aide under investigation after betting on election date

Oh dear. Now it has transpired that the Prime Minister's closest parliamentary aide, Craig Williams, placed a £100 bet on there being a July election — just three days before a rain-drenched Rishi Sunak announced the date to the public. The Guardian has tonight revealed that the Gambling Commission has launched an inquiry into the PM's private secretary after Williams placed a bet with Ladbrokes on Sunday 19 May. With odds of 5/1, Williams was set to receive £500. After the bet was placed, it is understood that a red flag was raised by the gambling company, as Williams’ was flagged as a 'politically exposed person' and the bookmaker was keeping tabs on 'novelty' markets. In a statement, the Welsh MP has since said: I put a flutter on the general election some weeks ago.

Steerpike

Listen: Andrew Neil schools Green co-leader on wealth tax

Another day, another campaign disaster. Now it's the turn of the Green party's co-leader Adrian Ramsay, who was this lunchtime interviewed by Andrew Neil for Times Radio. Ramsay's first mistake was to turn up late to the interview — while his next was to, er, not fully answer his interviewer's questions. Introducing the Greens as an 'anti-growth or no growth party', Neil first asked Ramsay whether he was in that case 'pretty pleased with this government', given the UK has had almost no economic growth since Covid.

Steerpike

Nicola Sturgeon’s ITV hypocrisy

Back to Scotland, where the SNP's Dear Leader is back in the news — literally, this time. It transpires that Nicola Sturgeon will be one of ITV's election night pundits during the overnight vote count. The former first minister will appear alongside Ed Balls and George Osborne to provide expert analysis while the election results come out, with Sturgeon billed by the broadcaster as a 'political insider'. You can say that again... But where Sturgeon goes, drama is never too far behind. Predictably the former FM's critics have been quick to lambast the ex-SNP leader, with charges of hypocrisy levelled at Sturgeon for accepting a gig her party once blasted Scottish Tory leader Ruth Davidson for.

Steerpike

Watch: Sunak admits to Sky TV sacrifice

Oh dear. The first clips of Rishi Sunak’s now infamous ITV interview have started to surface ahead of the full programme, to be broadcast on the channel at 7pm this evening. And if the Prime Minister thought his camera charm offensive might help soften hard feelings about his early departure from D-day commemorations last week, he was sorely mistaken. The PM’s critics have been quick to blast Sunak for telling ITV that the 80th anniversary events for D-day were ‘incredible’ but they ‘just ran over’. And it’s a question from seasoned interviewer Paul Brand about Sunak’s relatability that has really got viewers’ goat.  ‘When you are wealthier than the King, what do you do to make sure you’re still in touch with the kind of struggles ordinary viewers face?

Tuesday

Steerpike

Watch: Animal rights activists vandalise King’s portrait

Good heavens. Protestors are back to their old tricks and now it's the King's first official royal portrait that has ended up in the firing line. The all-new painting has been defaced by animal rights group 'Animal Rising', which today decided to vandalise the portrait — unveiled just last month by its artist Jonathon Yeo. Claiming to have 'redecorated' the painting, protestors covered the monarch's face with a cut-out image of Wallace, from cartoon show Wallace and Gromit, attaching a large speech bubble that reads: 'No cheese Gromit! Look at all this cruelty on RSPCA farms!' The vandals have said they want the stunt to bring attention to their long-running investigation of animal treatment in RSPCA farms, dubbed 'the biggest exposé' on the issue 'in history'.

Steerpike

Farage attacked again on campaign trail

Nigel Farage is continuing his cross-country campaign as he makes the case for voters to back Reform UK on 4 July. But while the arch-Brexiteer's new party is polling well — coming just two points below the Tories in last week's YouGov survey — Farage isn't getting a friendly response everywhere. A week after the milkshake incident at Clacton-on-sea, poor Nige has had to face off a rather more serious attack. The ex-Ukip leader took his battle bus to South Yorkshire today, where he waved to cheering locals from the open-topped double-decker. But it wasn't long before the pleasant atmosphere was ruined by a hooded man hurling objects from a nearby building site.

Steerpike

Former Green leader jumps ship to Labour

Another day, another drama. As general election campaign shenanigans continue, it now transpires that Robin Harper — the UK's first ever Green parliamentarian and former leader of the Scottish Greens — has jumped ship to Sir Keir Starmer's Labour party. With just over three and a half weeks to go until polling day, the veteran politician has announced he is endorsing the Shadow Scotland Secretary, Ian Murray, in Edinburgh South. The writing was on the wall when the ex-Edinburgh MP revealed last week that Harper was helping as a 'volunteer' during his campaigning. Murray — who until last year's Rutherglen by-election was the only Scottish Labour MP since 2019 — has held the seat since 2010 and achieved a majority of over 11,000 in the 2019 poll.

Monday

Steerpike

Reform candidate apologises for his Hitler neutrality comments

Oh dear, it seems like the election scandals are coming thick and fast at the moment. Today, it was the turn of Reform UK, after it was revealed that one of the party’s candidates claimed Britain would be ‘far better’ if we had ‘taken Hitler up on his offer of neutrality’ instead of fighting the Nazis during the second world war. Talk about a vote winner…  Ian Gribbin, Reform’s candidate for the Bexhill and Battle constituency, has caused a spot of bother for Nigel Farage's party after a selection of his online posts came to light today. Commenting on the UnHerd website in July 2022, the Bexhill candidate wrote:  ‘Britain would be in a far better state today had we taken Hitler up on his offer of neutrality….

Steerpike

Starmer’s shadow cabinet split on private schools

Labour have made much of their VAT raid on private school fees, proudly trumpeting the policy as one of the few instances of a 'popular' tax. So it must have been to the chagrin of Starmer's spinners then to see two of their leading frontbenchers contradicting each other about the costs of the policy. Appearing on GB News on Sunday morning, Emily Thornberry appeared to let the cat out of the bag when she discussed the consequences of pricing middle-class parents out of independent schools. 'If we have to have larger classes, we have larger classes’ she admitted breezily when she was asked about the prospect of an exodus from the private sector into the state sector.

Steerpike

Listen: BBC’s ‘careers week’ blunder

Another day, another BBC blunder. This time it involves Radio 2's Zoe Ball Breakfast Show this morning, which announced that this week is 'careers week'. In a call out for contributions, Ball urged listeners to phone in if they feel they have 'the most obscure job' and to divulge what their 'careers officer' told them at school. https://youtu.be/6nla1Exddxw There was one rather large problem with Ball's request, however. It transpires that it is not, in fact, careers week — but rather carers week. Oh dear. The correction came to light after a rather panicked jobs adviser texted into today's show following a frenzied fact-check at home. So much for the Beeb's much-lauded truth verifiers, eh. A rather sheepish researcher was dressed down later in the programme...

Sunday

Steerpike

Watch: Green leader’s nuclear disaster

There are some decent arguments in favour of unilateral disarmament. So it's a pity then that Carla Denyer did not make any of those when she appeared on LBC to give a car-crash interview earlier today. The Green co-leader decided that the best way to convince the British people to get rid of their Trident submarines at this election was to liken nuclear armageddon to, er, knife crime. Host Lewis Goodall began by asking Denyer whether 'We would be less of a target if we didn't have nuclear weapons?' pointing out that 'Poland doesn't have nuclear weapons, it's still a target'. 'I don't think that the argument for a deterrent is very effective' she retorted. 'Maybe you're right' replied Goodall but 'It's a risk. You wouldn't want to take a risk right now....

Steerpike

Watch: Tory aide stops Holden grilling

Which Tory minister is having the worst week in politics? It's a title that Rishi Sunak seemed to have sewn up after his D-Day disaster on Thursday. But it appears his Tory chairman is now giving him a late run for his money. Richard Holden was sent out to defend the government today, following Sunak's absence from the airwaves since Friday. But he faced his own interview embarrassment after Jon Craig of Sky decided to ask Holden as to why he switched seats this week at the very last-minute. 'So you can't justify the way you have been parachuted into Basildon and Billericay?' Craig jibed. 'You're not deciding it's a stitch-up and it's anti-democratic?' After a brief pause Holden then began to trot out his pre-prepared lines to take. 'Emily Thornberry today has admitted...

Steerpike

Minister: ‘No question’ of replacing Sunak

It's three days since Rishi Sunak's Normandy gaffe but there's no sign of the row going away anytime soon. The Sunday Times reports that Lord Cameron was 'apoplectic' about the Prime Minister's decision to leave the D-Day commemorations early but, when asked why he had not 'picked Sunak up by his lapels', replied 'There is only so much I can do.' The papers adds that there is also 'fury at Buckingham Palace' as 'the King, who is being treated for cancer, was advised not to travel but was determined to do so, despite being in pain.' Talk about getting a full house on the outrage front... It was left to Mel Stride, the Work and Pensions Secretary, to valiantly go forth on the media round to face the bombardment of the broadcasters.