Steve Turner (right) with former MP, Simon Clarke

Scott Hunter

16 March 2025

Former MP, Simon Clarke, has expressed his delight on social media at the Sunday Times standing up for his ‘friend’ Steve Turner, ex-Cleveland PCC. The Times article describes the torment Turner was put through following a series of allegations made against him under parliamentary privilege by Middlesbrough MP, Andy McDonald (a ‘witch hunt’, as the Sunday Times calls it).

Sunday Times, 9 March 2025

As for us, we think it may come as a surprise to Steve Turner that Simon Clarke classes him as a friend, given their history. Less of a surprise, given Caroline Wheeler’s indifference to checking out Turner’s background, is the fact that Andy McDonald MP was not the only person making allegations against Turner. And to make matters worse, there are also allegations made of Simon Clarke’s role in Turner scandal.  Some, but not all, of these are the testimony of the former chair of South Tees Conservative Association, Lee Holmes.



First, however, there are some previously undisclosed issues with Turner’s conduct in office contained in documents that Tees Valley Monitor has recently had sight of.

Turner’s Private Army

The job of the Police and Crime Panel (PCP) is to scrutinize the work of Cleveland Police and of the Police and Crime Commissioner. In February 2023 members were asked to consider referring Turner to the Independent Office for Police Conduct (IOPC). The issue was to do with his demands on the police on three occasions to intervene in relatively trivial matters that an overstretched police force would not otherwise have undertaken. The report of these issues was presented to the panel two months before those reported by Sky News when he had police interview a number of opponents and critics in the runup to the council elections in which he was a candidate that year. Those events are summarized here.

So, by the summer of 2023 there had been a string of incidents in which Turner appears to have abused his position to use police resources to pursue personal vendettas. We do not know at this point how far the Police and Crime Panel proceeded with this. It is evidence, nonetheless, that there were concerns about Turner’s conduct in office.

Cleveland Police Exposed

In addition to the potential misuse of police resources, the document also contains details of a Facebook page called ‘Cleveland Police Exposed’, which is described as an ‘anti-police site’ which aimed to ‘destroy confidence in Cleveland Police’. Not everyone would see it in such negative terms, but the issue here is to do with who owned and ran the site during the time of Turner’s tenure in office. And that, at least up until 2023, it is alleged to have been Steve Turner himself. 

Now if there is one person who should definitely have nothing to do with a site like this it’s the Police and Crime Commissioner, whose job it is to hold the police publicly to account, not to do so from behind the curtain of a Facebook page.

Testimony of former South Tees Conservative Association chair, Lee Holmes

Lee Holmes remains an old-fashioned Conservative but resigned his position as chair of his local association in disgust over the behaviour of Turner, Clarke and others. His allegations have been made public in his recent book Dark Associations: the secret life of the Conservative Party.

While it is relatively straightforward for right-wing critics of Andy McDonald to frame his actions in relation to Turner as a political witch hunt, it is more difficult to do so when the allegations come from a well-informed insider, like Holmes.

Turner, he says, became Simon Clarke’s Chief of Staff during the 2017 General Election. This was followed in 2019 by Turner’s also taking on the same role for Redcar MP, Jacob Young. His wife, Andrea, was taken on by Young as Senior Constituency Caseworker. This arrangement, Holmes reports “didn’t last, and by all accounts didn’t end well”. 

As regards Steve Turner’s position in Clarke’s office, however, Holmes believes that the arrangement worked well, in particular the combination of posh boy (Clarke) and ‘working class political bruiser’ (Turner) was constructive.

Problems began, however, when Turner put himself forward as a candidate for Police and Crime Commissioner in 2021, while failing to disclose that he had previously accepted a police caution for theft, a fact about which Holmes remains outraged,

“Turner’s failure to disclose that caution, and the criminality behind it, either to the party in his PCC application, or to voters during the election, or to myself when tapping me up for a substantial donation to his campaign, was a further act of serious dishonesty.”

Holmes was further unimpressed when Andy McDonald raised the matter in parliament, and Turner’s initial response, bizarrely, was to deny it outright.

Another bizarre aspect of this relates to Simon Clarke:

“… it has been suggested that Turner’s caution for handling stolen goods, even if ‘spent’, should have been flagged on the criminal records check for his Parliamentary security clearance to be Simon Clarke’s constituency office manager. The suggestion is that Simon Clarke should have been aware of Turner’s criminal background when putting him in charge of dealing with constituent’s [sic] sensitive personal matters as his office manager, in providing him with a reference to a Conservative PCC.

“If correct, the apparent extent to which Clarke would go to aid Turner is troubling to say the least.”

When he put these matters to Clarke in a tweet, Clarke responded by blocking him.

Holmes was also unimpressed by Turner’s decision to stand as a candidate for Redcar Council in 2023, and his selection as a candidate in a process that failed to follow Conservative Party rules. In 2023, he publicized his disapproval on Twitter (X):

“This initially focused on his dishonesty with voters and others in not declaring his police caution for handling stolen goods.”

Later, he questioned the advisability of Turner relaxing his commitment to the day job in this tweet:

“Middlesbrough has the 2^nd highest burglary rate in England. Shouldn’t Cleveland Police PCC Steve Turner be getting on with his day job rather than running for council?”

Holmes believes that he was on the list for a visit from Cleveland Police, except that he was out of the area at the time. Police later reported to him that his tweets had been submitted to them for investigation, but they had concluded that they did not constitute hate speech and so no further action would be taken.

Turner persevered as a candidate, despite all the criticism, and lost. As did his wife, who had been the leader of the Conservative group on the council.

The Power Couple

We began with a raised eyebrow over Simon Clarke’s reference to Turner as his ‘friend’. Our questioning of that claim to friendship is actually to do with Steve Turner’s wife, Andrea. We mentioned earlier that Andrea was taken on by former Redcar MP, Jacob Young, but that this had been short-lived and didn’t end well. Despite this, Andrea then moved on to take up a similar position in Simon Clarke’s office. This was also short lived and didn’t end well. On this . occasion, however, Andrea didn’t take things lying down and, in 2023, took legal action against him. This, we believe, put some strain on the friendship between Clarke and Steve Turner. Maybe not, on the other hand. Perhaps this is just how Teesside’s Tories interact.

Except that the power couple have now deserted Teesside’s Tories.

Turf War at Reform UK, Redcar

The Turners, it appears, after their dalliance with the Conservative Party, are in the process of returning to their spiritual homeland on the far right and are in the process of aligning themselves with Reform UK. Such is the Turners’ sense of entitlement that they consider the only position suitable for them within the organization is at the top. The result is an ongoing war of words between them and the erstwhile leader of Redcar Branch of Reform, the former ppc, John Davies. Davies doesn’t mince his words about them:

Steve and Andrea each have their own way of dealing with this. Here’s Andrea’s:

And Steve’s (since taken down, it appears)

Reform UK, it appears, has the hallmark of all far-right parties that they hate no one quite as much as they hate each other. It is entirely possible that the party will split, potentially allowing Steve and Andrea to become very big fish in their own very small pond. So, the hand wringing of Simon Clarke over a life ruined may turn to be premature.  And, in the light of the evidence presented here, this may be a good time for him to provide an explanation of just how baseless the allegations against Turner are, and of his role in the scandal.

The Quality of Oversight

One uncomfortable fact stands out here, and that is not so much to do with Steve Turner himself as with those whose job it was to scrutinise his activity. He was the subject of a string of complaints during his time in office. Did the Cleveland PCP refer any of those complaints to the IOPC? We are writing to them to ask. What leads us to believe that the answer will be negative is that the contract of the Chief Constable, Richard Lewis, was cut short (he wasn’t due to leave until 2027). Was he dispatched while Turner was spared? Lee Holmes certainly considers the PCP to be wholly ineffectual. We await their response before passing judgement, however. 



Lee Holmes’ book, Dark Associations: the secret life of the Conservative Party, is available on Amazon:

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Dark-Associations-Secret-Conservative-Party/dp/B0D2YM5JKK