Broadly In Line

The prison discharge grant is paid in cash, but the process leading up to that is not the only electronic part of the convoluted business of release. If you were not already opposed to digital ID, then the Hadush Kebatu fiasco should have left you in no remaining doubt.

Of course David Lammy should resign or be sacked, but of course he will not be. Keir Starmer made Lammy Deputy Prime Minister to make it clear that he would not be giving that position to anyone whom the Parliamentary Labour Party had nominated for Deputy Leader. The two-fingered salute was to the PLP, not to the party at large. If the latter had elected Bridget Phillipson, then Lammy would still have remained in post. But he should still be sacked as Justice Secretary.

In any case, even though outside the Westminster Village, where there has never been much of a Left to begin with, almost no one to the left of Lucy Powell has now been in the Labour Party in years, 83.4 per cent of the right-wing remnant saw no reason to vote for a Deputy Leader. Even the claim that Powell's supporters wanted to kick Starmer, while it may be true to certain personal or regional extents, has no policy basis. Think of a bad thing that this Government has done, and Powell not only voted for it, but timetabled it as Leader of the House. She said that not withdrawing the Winter Fuel Payment would lead to a run on the pound. But she is not a placeholder for Andy Burnham. Angela Rayner set out her stall for Leader on Wednesday, and Powell set out hers yesterday. Phillipson will put up. It is hardly going to be Lammy.

Does Sarah Pochin find the sight of Lammy offensive? She soon will, when he was advertising, well, what, exactly? Give reasons for your answer. But as there used to be people who were Labour because they were beyond the bounds of each and all of the tightly delineated Marxist parties, and there may even still be a few although if anyone joined Your Party then they would, so there are people who are Conservatives because they are beyond the bounds of Reform UK.

For example, Katie Lam, the Idi Amin of Britain, except that Amin expelled far fewer people from Uganda than Lam would expel from the United Kingdom, and except that Amin was the son of a Kakwa father and a Lugbara mother, his blood and soil unimpeachable to those who believed in such things, whereas Lam is of Dutch Jewish extraction. Yet her proposals have been called "broadly in line" with Conservative Party policy. By Kemi Badenoch. Where to begin?

This time last year, those proposals would have been unthinkable. Back then, mass deportations of anyone were being ruled out by Nigel Farage. Yet look at even Labour, in the person Shabina Mahmood, these days. This Parliament still has three and a half years to go. And during those years, we are all going to be made to have digital ID.