First class, Alan

LIB DEM peer Lord Allan of Hallam, also Facebook’s European policy chief, gave evidence to a Commons committee after his boss Mark Zuckerberg snubbed MPs. It was good to hear Hallam’s voice! He hasn’t spoken in a Lords debate for five years.

THERE has been a 90 per cent drop in reports of moped crime in the North London borough of Camden since the police went on the offensive by pushing the muggers off their bikes in what are described as ‘risk-assessed tactical contact’ operations.

ALAN JoHNSoN, the ex-postie and union boss who became a Labour Cabinet minister, has given his support to the Brexit deal and derided Labour MPs for demanding a second referendum. Writing in the Left-wing New Statesman magazine, Johnson declares: ‘Some of the Labour benches see the meaningful vote as being an opportunity to press for either a “People’s Vote” — as if the one in June 2016 was for androids — or a General Election, as if the one in June 2017 would have led to a different outcome if only Labour had won.’ Hear, hear!

A BLOOMING SILLY ANSWER, TULIP!

WHEN Lastminute.com founder Martha Lane Fox became the youngest woman to sit in the Lords in 2013, she was invited to tea by the redoubtable Baroness Trumpington, who died last week aged 96.The wartime code breaker told her: ‘Don’t take this lot as seriously as they take themselves.’ Sound advice from the woman who famously made a V-sign at a fellow peer . . . and who will be much missed.