Carol Vorderman has just wrapped up her ‘fireside chat’ about the “new media landscape” with Carole Cadwalladr at Labour Conference. The key lessons were that she does not have the Daily Mail app on her phone (the audience liked that), Ofcom should muzzle GB News (the audience loved that), and, to the biggest cheer of the hour-long session, that she absolutely adores Andy Burnham. She warned she’d even consider standing for Parliament if the King of the North led the party…
Vorderman: “I love Andy Burnham… I have a [t-shirt]. I thought, should I come in ‘I love Andy’…
Cadwalladr: “…When we spoke together before at the Byline Times [festival], I was like come on Carol, someone needs to run for office, get out there. Would you ever stand to be an MP?”
Vorderman: “And I said only if Andy asked me…”
She also dismissed the idea of Labour winning another election so long as Keir Starmer holds the keys to Number 10, drawing nods from an audience made up mostly of Labour members. Downing Street can’t count on her effusive support next time…
Starmer spoke to Nick Robinson for the Today Programme on Polanski’s criticism of the Golders Green police officers:
“I want everybody just to imagine what it might be like. You’re trying to arrest someone who has already attacked two people and has no regard for life. We know that tasers were fired. I know from my own experience with the police, that there are only two shots in a taser, and once you’ve shot them, there’s nothing left. There’s a guy on the ground, he’s got a rucksack on. And I don’t know what was going through the mind of those officers, but if I was there, I’d be thinking, he’s going to detonate something. He’s going to blow me up and everybody around here. In those circumstances, I think you can quite see why what could have gone through their mind is, we need to do whatever we can to disable this guy…
Now, when I then see Zack Polanski come out and retweet or support a criticism of that, I think it’s disgraceful… He’s not fit to lead any political party.”