Jacqui ‘I’m a disgrace and shouldn’t be a peer’ Smith was given a peerage over the weekend to serve as education minister in Starmer’s “change” government. Co-conspirators will remember that Smith was the first to fall to expensegate in 2009 – taxpayers paid for her husband’s porno thrills and almost everything else, literally including the kitchen sink, right down to her 88p bath plug. She resigned and declared in 2012 on Question Time: “I don’t think people who have been disgraced should go to the House of Lords”…

It’s worth remembering what the former Home Secretary said last time an ex-politician with experience of government entered the Lords to work again. Literally nine months ago on the For The Many podcast she said:

“It is a bit of a sign that you’re coming to the end of a government… it’s not undoable, where I think it matters more and it mattered when Peter Mandelson came back is – it slightly suggests that you don’t think there are any of your own backbenchers who are able to do it and there might be a few people that are a bit peeved about it… it is also done, as the Peter Mandelson thing was done, as an attempt to try to limit a potential defeat that is coming down the track…”

Starmer will be surprised to hear his government is coming to an end…