Is Jess Phillips still there? I ask because I had to write this some hours before you read it and Keir Starmer has a tendency to act fast when he decides someone is more trouble than they’re worth.
But then Jess is nothing if not loud and she would add to an uncomfortably large number of sackees on the Labour back benches.
I’ve never quite been sure who Jess is. She sounds so Brummie working class you would have thought she worked at Longbridge (for younger readers, that used to be a car factory). But her mother was a high-level NHS official and she went to one of the country’s most academic selective grammar schools.
She’s constantly proclaiming her deep concern for vulnerable women. But that didn’t stretch to holding an inquiry into grooming gangs, until Sir Keir turned her over and ordered one anyway.
It could be worth bearing in mind that her July 2024 majority in Birmingham Yardley, a constituency with a Muslim population estimated at 45 per cent, was 693.
Phillips can also be quite hard to pin down on exactly who qualifies as a woman. It’s tempting to see her as a modern version of Tom Lehrer’s Wernher Von Braun: a woman whose allegiance is ruled by expedience.
As I write she’s in the middle of a tug-of-war between the stalled inquiry’s appointed victims. The inquiry is such a success that the choice of its head is now said to be months away, and there is no queue of eminent persons to take the job.
Sir Keir, however, is not short of victories on other fronts. As demonstrated by the bouncing boat person – one in, one out, one back again – who found France so uncongenial.
Deputy Prime Minister David Lammy explained: ‘Today’s news actually reveals that the individual, who spent thousands of pounds trying to get into this country, as a result of his biometric data can be sent back and that is progress.’
So far this year 36,886 illicit migrants have arrived in Britain after crossing the Channel in small boats and Border Force vessels.
Mr Lammy has spent years developing his zany sense of humour and, now that Lenny Henry has made himself about as popular as Gary Neville, he is surely in the running for a future role as the BBC’s official number one black comedian and Comic Relief presenter. He has some rivals in television news, mind. One TV inquisitor on Friday night thought the escaping Epping asylum seeker sex offender was all the fault of the Tories, because they cut prison officer numbers. We can all make our minds up on this one after examining the facts, one of which is that the prisons are run by the Justice Department, which is currently in the charge of Mr Lammy.
Yesterday morning the Metropolitan Police reported that missing sex offender Hadush Kebatu had been spotted in the London area. I refer to Little Bonaparte rebuking Spats in Some Like It Hot: ‘You mean you let ’em get away twice? Some people would say that’s real sloppy.’ (Kebatu was rearrested this morning.)
The King met Pope Leo and prayed with him in the Sistine Chapel. The occasion was not made more dignified by the presence of the happy-clappy Archbishop of York, and it was odd to hear prayers spoken in English in the heart of the Roman Catholic world. But it was a heartening example of Christians circling the wagons rather than forming a circular firing squad.
The big news of the week, of course, was the departure of Tess Daly and Claudia Winkleman from a popular BBC show called Sheila Goes Ballroom or some such. I think I already know too much about Miss Winkleman’s hair, and it wasn’t surprising to hear the programme has been the subject of bullying allegations. It’s television: the shock would be if there was no bullying.
The BBC now has the problem of finding fresh presenters. May I suggest David Lammy?
