Rats in a Sack: The Conservatives’ star conference turn… Peter Andre

Whether this is a formal endorsement of the Tories by what lesser gossip columns would refer to as “the Mysterious Girl hitmaker” is unclear. “He is doing this booking through a TikTok booking,” his representative tells your correspondent. “And we will not be commenting on Peter’s political views.”

But Andre has previously done presenting shifts on far right channel GB News, where Insania is not just a song – it’s a broadcasting strategy!

Considerably hipper in the musical stakes are the Liberal Democrats, four of whose MPs took to the decks at the party’s annual disco at their party conference in Brighton.

Steff Aquarone dropped tunes by the likes of Taylor Swift, S Club and Rave, Susan Murray went old-school with Bronski Beat and Sparks and Lisa Smart – operating under the name DJ Smartie for the night – brought the indie disco with Arctic Monkeys and the Killers.

But most intriguingly, David Chadwick played Sophie Ellis-Bextor’s Murder on the Dancefloor. Did leader Ed Davey, so fond of an eye-catching stunt, go full Saltburn and run around the room clad in nothing but his birthday suit? We’re not saying he did. But equally, we’re not saying he didn’t.

The Lib Dems’ chief whip Wendy Chamberlain, meanwhile, sang a reworked version of Let It Be about Liz Truss at the party’s annual Glee Club party, entitled Lettuce Be.

Disgraced former minister Owen Paterson – who stepped down from parliament last year after a House of Commons probe found he broke its rules on paid lobbying – will today find out if he has won his battle with the UK government… at the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR).

The ex-environment secretary lodged a complaint with the ECHR two years ago claiming that the investigation by the parliamentary watchdog breached his right to a private life under the Convention’s Article 8.

Paterson was found by the Parliamentary Commissioner for Standards to have breached paid advocacy rules for making seven approaches to the government on behalf of the healthcare company Randox. But the former MP said the watchdog’s findings had “damaged his good reputation” and that the process by which the allegations against him were investigated was “not fair in many basic respects.”

Readers’ jaws may not drop upon learning that the fervent Brexiteer has not always been a fan of the ECHR. In a speech to the campaign group Business for Britain in 2014, he said it would be easier to stop EU migrants coming to the UK if Britain were to withdraw from the ECHR. He has also argued for the UK to adopt its own Bill of Rights to set the country “free from the ECHR”. 

But now a horrible watchdog has said some nasty things about him, so his tune has quickly changed!

In other legal news, which Conservative MP who lost their seat at the general election faces some potential trouble in the libel courts after posting a defamatory and entirely fictitious claim about a cabinet minister on Twitter/X?

Their defence, that a black cab driver told them the story, might not hold up in court.

Graham Brady, former chair of the Conservative 1922 backbench committee and Keeper of the Letters, is publishing his memoirs, the immodestly-titled Kingmaker. Among various tales of ratsackery – Penny Mordaunt sniffing around Rishi Sunak’s job at a low point of his premiership among them – are an eyebrow-raising assessment of his fellow MPs by David Cameron.

During a series of scandals in 2014, Brady reveals that the then PM told him: “The fact is, a lot of politics is just shit: it’s choosing the least bad option… life would be easier if colleagues paid their expenses on time [sic] and didn’t snort coke and sodomise each other.”

Fuming over the Keir Starmer clothes affair – “far worse than a piece of cake” – Dan Wootton took to Twitter/X to fume over how it was being glossed over by the mainstream media.

“The MSM in the UK is filled with activists, not journalists,” he said. “Only independent media will hold this filthy corrupt Labour government to account.”

He then linked to an article about the supposedly buried scandal in that notoriously independent samizdat publication… The Times!

Competition for Tom Baldwin, author of a bestselling biography of Keir Starmer – there’s a new journalistic hotshot in town.

Somebody called Keith Esther, who may or may not exist, has released Keir Starmer: A Journey From Justice To Leadership, Unveiling The Man Who Reshaped Law And Politics. The 81-page opus is available from Amazon for £9.41, following Esther’s previous biographies of Stephen King, John Grisham and the footballer Kevin Campbell.

And just look at that cover…

Reform MP and anthropomorphic potato Lee Anderson has rode in to support yet another central tenet of British life falling victim to po-faced wokery: the saucy seaside postcard.

Posting a picture of one on Twitter/X in which an amusing mishearing causes a sunbathing couple to mistake talk of a tent peg for a penis, the Ashfield MP bemoaned: “Remember these? As a child I remember giggling at these postcards in Skegness. They were considered harmless fun at the time. Nowadays you won’t find them anywhere and the left would consider them as sexist, misogynistic and rude.

“Yet go on the internet and see pretty much anything. Oh how times have changed.”

They have indeed, although perhaps less because of wokery and more because (a) far fewer people take their holidays at the British seaside, (b) nobody sends postcards and (c) they were never funny. His constituents – approximately 60 miles from the nearest beach – must be delighted Anderson is focusing on the issues that matter!

“The Rotheram and Rochdale Grooming Gangs are one of the biggest national scandals,” began Suella Braverman on Twitter/X this week, showing so much concern for the former town she couldn’t even spell its name properly.

There’s a by-election for the Little Parndon and Town Centre on Harlow Council next month sparked by the incumbent, Chris Vince, being elected a Labour MP in July.

Reform’s candidate is Peter Lamb, a former Conservative activist who was suspended from the party back in 2015 after posting a number of Islamophobic tweets including “Islam like alcoholism [sic]. The first step to recovery is admit you have a problem.”

Nigel Farage recently announced he was professionalising Reform after a string of candidates were found to have a history of posting suspect opinions online. Looks like it’s going well…