What’s The Story?

The Labour benches were empty by five o’clock, in time for Balamory. But when, exactly, were two MPs last thrown out of the same debate for having called the Prime Minister a liar? Gary Gibbon told viewers of the State’s Channel 4 that Lee Anderson and Zarah Sultana had staged “grandstanding stunts”, so a nerve had been touched.

“Peter Mandelson’s vetting” calls to mind all manner of hideous procedures. But the word has gone out to make the story “Russia and China” (what, no Iran?), rather than Jeffrey Epstein. In quieter times, just as two of the biggest stories would have been the conviction of Paul Quinn and the quashed conviction of Benjamin Field, so a third should, but would not, have been the sentence of a mere eight months, and even then suspended for two years, imposed on Conor McGrath.

McGrath’s colleague as a Labour councillor in Stevenage was Mason Humberstone, who contested internal Labour Party elections on Morgan McSweeney’s Labour Together slate until last year, during which he was one of at least six sitting Labour councillors to defect to Reform UK. Reform expects to take the Stevenage parliamentary seat from Labour, so will Councillor Humberstone be attending the Unite the Kingdom rally with Stephen Yaxley-Lennon and Sharon Osbourne?

The anti-immigration immigrant Valentina Gomez will not be allowed to do so, and nor should anyone who intended to come to this country to call on Donald Trump to invade it and effect regime change. Instead, their spots should be given to María Corina Machado and Reza Pahlavi, who could set the marchers straight in no uncertain terms.