Sir Keir Starmer has a sausage problem. Stop sniggering at the back. Not only was there his infamous slip demanding that Hamas ‘return the sausages’, but there is also the fact that he increasingly resembles a great British banger: pink-skinned, spitting and whistling when grilled and filled with all kinds of rubbish. Sir Keir has become the Sausage King of Westminster and today – at the House of Commons liaison committee – he was due a spell on the barbecue.

Part of the problem for the Sausage King is that he’s managed to wind up a fair few of the select committee chairs who make up the grilling committee: quite an achievement given that almost all of them are his own MPs. Emily Thornberry was there, looking extraordinarily jolly for one who’d been passed over for attorney-general in favour of one of Starmer’s lawyer mates. Dame Meg Hillier spearheaded the rebellion that forced his humiliating climb-down on welfare, while Florence Esholami led much of the resistance to the assisted suicide legislation, a bill which........

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