Starmer’s new secret weapon: a love-rat diplomat

HE was educated at £ 46,740- ayear Tonbridge school, boasts linguistic flair — he’s fluent in arabic, Hebrew and French — and is a member of Brooks’s, the rarefied gentlemen’s club in st James’s, London.

so who better could sir Keir starmer recruit to the Labour Party as he attempts to rid it of the hard- Left ‘ comradeship’ of the Jeremy Corbyn era than his fellow knight, the lavishly named sir sherard Cowper-Coles, formerly British ambassador to saudi arabia and, later, to afghanistan.

sir sherard may already be immersed in party intrigue.

‘well, look, I’m in a meeting,’ he tells me. ‘ I can’t talk at the moment,’ he adds, before agreeing that a quick word may be possible a little later.

alas, when I telephone again — and again — his mobile rings unanswered until connected to a recorded message. His caution may be entirely understandable. ‘starmer is intent on putting him in the House of Lords,’ my westminster mole tells me.

Though now 68, sir sherard would appear to have plenty left to give, if his private life is anything to go by. He notched up five children by his wife Bridget.

But she remained at home — barring three brief visits — throughout her husband’s tenure as ambassador in afghanistan.

Not long afterwards, sir sherard had a sixth child on the way — a distressing development for Bridget, given that the unborn baby’s mother was Jasmine Zerinini, a French foreign ministry official who had been based in afghanistan.

Bridget, a niece of the late actor Denholm Elliott, did not attempt to disguise the pain caused after nearly 30 years of marriage.

‘It has been a very upsetting 18 months for me and my five children,’ she said soon after Zerinini gave birth to a girl in 2012.

‘we are all coming to terms with the situation.’

sir sherard and Zerinini married months later. will he and sir Keir now come clean about becoming (political) bedfellows?