While Starmer’s premiership is imploding Jolyon Maugham is busy having a protracted argument over whether he was friends with writer JK Rowling. Your average day on Planet Jolyon…
Maugham took issue with Kezia Dugdale – former Scottish Labour leader and new chairman of LGBTQ+ charity Stonewall – praising Rowling and said on woke playground Bluesky: “I speak to a lot of people about JK Rowling – many once close friends with her. I was once friends with her. And they all say she is now very changed.” On X Rowling said she had never met him and called Jolyon “a fixated loon”…
Jolyon is now raging on Bluesky about Rowling’s “band of trolls” and says he has “direct messages from her signed off with a kiss which is, I’d say, a decent marker of friendship.” So followed one message from 2017 about Katie Hopkins…

Does anyone want to check on Jolyon? Dibs not…
Douglas Alexander – a friend of Starmer’s – was asked on Sky News if the PM will be in post at the next election. He wasn’t so sure himself:
“I think he will. There are no certainties but of course I think he will lead and I think he should because, frankly, on the biggest call in this parliament he’s exercised the right judgment, which is to keep us out of someone else’s war.”