Westminster Noticeboard...

+ around lunchtime today, Harriet Harman will stand down as Labour’s acting leader for the second time.

I disagree with almost everything she stands for, but can’t hide a grudging admiration for her. She has shown commendable grit and resilience as her party has been busy tearing itself apart.

If Labour had one iota of common sense, they would be fighting for her to stay on at the helm, instead of plumping, in all likelihood, for a man who has more chance of bicycling to the Moon than of becoming PM. + WHEN questioned about our abandonment of Afghan translators, Armed Forces Minister Penny Mordaunt said there was no major problem, and that she was unaware of a single former interpreter killed by the Taliban. Since then, there have been two attempts on translators’ lives.

But then what else can we expect f rom a woman most notable for taking part in the t rashy, high- diving reality show, Splash!

+ SCIENTISTS have discovered fossils of what may be the first humans and named them Homo naledi.

With a brain the size of an orange, hairy features and pre-historic attitudes, shouldn’t they be called Homo corbyn?

+ BARACK OBAMA says the day he spent eating the left-overs from a grizzly bear’s salmon supper with adventurer Bear Grylls was one of the best days of his presidency. Given what a letdown he’s been in office, I’m tempted to agree.

SAD that David Walliams and his supermodel wife Lara Stone have divorced after just five years of marriage. In the courts this week, he cited her ‘unreasonable behaviour’ as the cause of the split. Privately, he’s said to have objected to her modelling shoot in which Justin Bieber rolled around atop her naked torso. Perhaps not so much unreasonable behaviour as unfathomable.