You won’t better Betty, Harriet

ANOTHER contender for the Speaker’s chair, Labour’s Harriet Harman, 69, says that electing her would show that women in their 60s are not past it. Er . . . Betty Boothroyd’s been there and done that, Harriet. In 1992, when she became Speaker, the great lady was 62. SINCE he saw off the attempt to replace him as Labour’s deputy leader at the party conference, Tom Watson has been keeping a low profile. So low in fact that he rarely bothers to attend Shadow Cabinet any more. ‘He can’t see the point,’ said a friend. ‘Corbyn never wants him to say anything . . . so he can make his points more effectively in the media than in the Shadow Cabinet.’ MEANWHILE, Jezza is calling for a public inquiry into arms sales to Saudi Arabia, saying: ‘ UK advice, assistance and arms supplies to Saudi’s war in Yemen is a moral stain on our country. Arms sales to Saudi must stop now.’

Imran Hussain, the Shadow Minister of State for Justice, is no fan either, declaring: ‘ I think Saudi have public beheadings. So not much justice there then.’

Odd then that, in August, Hussain accepted £20,000 from the Saudi UK embassy for a two-week trip for two to Mecca. INVItEd to choose her favourite LP for National Album day last Saturday, Culture Secretary Nicky Morgan plumped for robbie Williams’s 1998 record I’ve Been Expecting You.

‘My favourite song is No regrets because it reminds me of my youth,’ added Morgan, hinting at more exciting activities than running through wheat fields (as a certain theresa May once claimed to have done).

Clearly, Morgan has no regrets about reneging on her previously stated refusal to serve in a Boris Johnson Cabinet. GEOFFREY COX is letting the good times roll since becoming Attorney General. A parliamentary answer reveals that his ascetic predecessor, Jeremy Wright, spent precisely zero on ‘refreshments’ in 2017. Under treacle-voiced Cox, the figure rose to a more respectable £603.44. Not enough to crack open a bottle of Chateau Margaux 1787, perhaps, but getting there.