Labour loses control of the credit card

After four straight election defeats, Labour are desperately keen to prove that the party has changed. Gone – supposedly – are the bad old days of tax and spend. Fiscal restraint is now the order of the day. The £28 billion in green spending has been unceremoniously axed; a commitment to restore the bankers’ bonus cap duly binned too. No more will ‘uncontrolled spending’ be synonymous with Keir Starmer’s party.

So it must be to the chagrin of Labour HQ then that not all their frontbenchers appear to have got the memo about the importance of being trusted with the country’s credit card. For Steerpike has been told by one of his spies that David Lammy’s Amex card was discovered today outside one of Westminster’s favourite watering holes. The card, which bore the name of the Shadow Foreign Secretary, was found propped up outside the Red Lion pub by parliament and duly handed in by a concerned citizen to two ‘perplexed and stunned security guards’ at Derby Gate.