Topic summary
Piggate
- Cameron–Clegg coalition and agreement
- Nick Clegg's tenure as Deputy Prime Minister
- Chancellorship of George Osborne
- Theresa May's tenure as Home Secretary
- Iain Duncan Smith as Work and Pensions Secretary
- Michael Gove's tenure as Education Secretary
- Jeremy Hunt's tenure as Health Secretary
- Bloody Sunday apology
- Spending, Strategic Defence, Balance of Competences reviews
- Military intervention in Libya (Operation Ellamy)
- Big Society
- Big Society Award
- National Citizen Service
- Alternative Vote referendum
- Phone hacking scandal
- 2011 riots
- Welfare Reform Act
- State visit by Barack Obama to the United Kingdom
- London 2012 Summer Olympics
- Belfast City Hall flag protests
- Bloomberg speech
- Marriage (Same Sex Couples) Act 2013
- Woolwich attack
- Scottish independence referendum
- Royal Mail privatisation
- Second ministry (majority)
- July 2015 budget
- Operation Shader
- Military intervention against ISIL in Iraq
- 2015–16 floods
- EU referendum
- Brexit
- Murder of Jo Cox
- Panama Papers
- 2016 Conservative Party leadership election
- Resignation Honours
"Piggate" refers to a claim that, during his time at Oxford University, then-British prime ministerDavid Cameron inserted his penis and/or scrotum into a dead pig's mouth as part of an initiation ceremony for the Piers Gaveston Society. The anecdote was reported by Michael Ashcroft and Isabel Oakeshott in their unauthorised biography of Cameron, Call Me Dave, attributing the story to an anonymous Member of Parliament who was allegedly a contemporary of Cameron's at the University of Oxford. Extracts from the book were published in the Daily Mail on 20 September 2015, prior to its publication.
Downing Street sources responded by saying that Cameron would not dignify the anecdote with a response, while friends reported him saying that it was "utter nonsense." Cameron said later that "a very specific denial was made a week ago." Ashcroft and Oakeshott failed to receive a response from the purported owner of a photograph of the alleged incident. No corroborating evidence has been produced to support the anecdote. In an interview, Valentine Guinness, one of the Piers Gaveston Society founders, said that as far as he knew, Cameron "may well have attended one of their parties" but was never a member.