The former Foreign Secretary warns that the current Foreign Secretary “cannot afford to be completely absent” from the world stage as the Iran crisis deepens. It’s not just Hunt, the ongoing Brexit/Tory psychodrama has completely distracted the whole UK media/political class from the increasingly serious events unfolding abroad…

David Miliband is giving a speech this morning about how we should stay in the single market. On 9 May 2016, at the height of the referendum campaign, the same David Miliband told voters that voting to leave the EU would mean leaving the single market. This is from a Stronger In press release. He could not have been clearer:

“The admission by the Leave campaign that quitting the EU means quitting the single market has let the cat out of the bag: a vote to Leave would be an unprecedented act of economic self-harm.”

This really is the height of dishonesty from Miliband.

Double-jobbing Ed Miliband’s peak hypocritical stint as a radio presenter is finally drawing to a close. For the big set-piece on today’s show he managed to secure the time of his own brother David, who joined listeners live from New York. As with many a media moment Ed has been involved in, it all went wrong fairly quickly. The line kept dropping and David had to resort to a phone rather than broadcast quality connection. Ed finally cut the interview short, declaring “I’ll see you very soon“. Christmas if you’re lucky…

In the last 48 hours David Miliband has privately contacted at least one veteran moderate MP to ask if they might step down and grease his path back to parliament. The impression from one very senior Labour MP is that David has decided not to return at this election. He has until noon on Sunday to put in an application for a “safe” seat…

Spotted by a co-conspirator round the back of the Department of Health this afternoon, a life-size cardboard cutout of a banana-wielding David Miliband dumped unceremoniously in a bin. If anyone would like to come forward with the story behind the picture, get in touch…

UPDATE: A spring cleaning Greg Hands comes forward:

“I confess this was me. Have had it since Sep 2010 for a CCHQ special op for him becoming Labour Leader. It never happened. Have held on 6 yrs in case he ever came back. Have just given up on him – like doubtless thousands of Labour members! Bin.”

UPDATE II: The cardboard cutout has been retrieved and re-homed by Tory bin raiders on a parliamentary corridor: