Steerpike

When it rains for the Labour lot, it pours. It has emerged that Sir Keir Starmer's party has become so unpopular among its own base that it has lost more than one in 10 members since the general election – and in recent months has seen one member quit every 10 minutes. Dear oh dear… According to membership figures held by the party's governing body, Starmer's army has around 309,000 paid-up supporters – which is a decrease of more than 11 per cent from the 348,000 backers it had at the time of last year's July poll. To add insult to injury, these numbers are net figures – meaning the loss of new members may even greater than they suggest.

Well, well, well. It seems the Good Law Project, founded by Jolyon Maugham of fox-killing infamy, may be rather struggling to find supporters. Who'd have thunk it? The do-gooder group is eager to fill its vacancy for the prestigious position of EU Campaign lead – but it would appear it can't seem takers for the role. In fact, the Babe Ruth of the bar seems to have gotten so concerned he's even flung an advert for the post in this week's edition of The Spectator – famously an advocate of both Maugham and the EU, of course. It appears that in his panic to locate a new hire Jolyon has rather missed the irony of advertising with this Brexit-backing magazine.

To Westminster, where last week Kim Leadbeater’s Assisted Dying bill began the evidence session of committee stage. But rather than provide much needed clarification about the scope of suicide bill, the three days of evidence sessions instead threw up even more questions about the safety of the legislation. After paying careful attention to the hours of hearings, Mr S has compiled some of the worst moments of the evidence sessions that left critics more concerned than comforted… Who’s there? 50 witnesses were called to give evidence last week – and it quickly emerged that there was nothing like an equal split between bill backers and sceptics.

The Foreign Office was once described as a 'palace of dreams', yet these days it seems increasingly like a graveyard full of nightmares. Just weeks after the Gaza ceasefire, the outbreak of a tariff war in America is just another fresh headache for the Sir Humphreys of Whitehall. Yet with Trump returning to the White House, our elected Labour overlords have decided that now is the perfect time to reset Britain's relations with both Europe and China. Talk about having your work cut out... The Foreign Office's work has been made harder by the declining number of foreign language speakers in its department. Mr S has done some digging to see how language levels compare to ten years' ago.

Some good news for the BBC: for once it's not them causing bad headlines. Today's latest shining example in public service broadcasting is offered by Channel 4. It seems that in their never-ending quest to boost their flagging ratings, producers have turned in desperation to a TV 'personality' with some rather unsavoury views. Go Back to Where You Came From is a new social experiment programme which airs next week. It aims to show 'a group of Brits experiencing the life-threatening danger asylum seekers find themselves in'. It reportedly will show 'the terror of small boat crossings' – will it emphasise the illegality too? One of those featured is Bushra Shaikh, a self-styled 'political commentator' whose main claim to fame seems to be in saying the downright stupid.

As Reform UK's support surges, the Conservatives are coming under scrutiny for failing to deal with immigration to the UK during their time in power. Former Home Secretary Priti Patel found herself in the firing line after she was grilled on the Sun’s Never Mind the Ballots today. Quizzed by the newspaper’s political editor Harry Cole, Patel was first shown a graph of Britain’s immigration levels before being told: ‘You ended free movement for Europeans and you threw the borders open for the rest of the world!’ Ouch. An indignant Patel insisted ‘legal migration’ was behind the spike, and claimed ‘the brightest and the best’ had been let into Britain under the Tories. Er, right. ‘I’m not fine with [the graph],’ the ex-Home Secretary eventually admitted.