Stringfellow may contest Clegg’s Sheffield seat
Nightclub owner: Peter Stringfellow may stand against Nick Clegg at the 2015 general election. Photo: Niall Carson/PA Wire.
SHEFFIELD’S nightclub king Peter Stringfellow has signalled he could stand against Nick Clegg at the 2015 general election.
It comes after the Deputy Prime Minister twice singled him out as someone who did not deserve state-funded pensioner benefits.
He said that at 72 he had “done everything a guy would probably like to do... and I might take a serious view of moving into politics”, with his home town of Sheffield the most likely target.
Mr Clegg has riled the millionaire by using him as ammunition in his fight to remove the winter fuel payment from the wealthiest OAPs - a move opposed by Prime Minister David Cameron.
“You cannot ask people to take big cuts in their... benefits, and say it’s okay for Peter Stringfellow and Alan Sugar to be given a whole bunch of free benefits when they don’t need it, paid for by other taxpayers,” he said.
He repeated the charge on Thursday in his weekly phone-in on radio station LBC 97.3.
Asked by the station’s James Whale last night about the chances he might stand in Mr Clegg’s Sheffield Hallam constituency, he said: “I think ‘why not?’. It has opened my mind to the possibility and the idea of going back to my home city and taking him on would be my first choice.
“Everybody knows my clubs are full of beautiful girls taking their clothes off. I don’t want to be Hugh Hefner... so a bit later on in life I like the idea of going into politics and I think I could contribute the reality.”
Although a Tory supporter, he said he knew his line of business would make him an “easy target” so would probably stand as an independent, though he added: “If they’d like to adopt me, fine.”
And he said he would live in the South Yorkshire city, adding: “My God, do you know how cheap those bloody big houses are up there.”
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Weather for Sheffield
Saturday 18 May 2013
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