We are on the home stretch of the party conference season. It’s the turn of the Greens this weekend and Zack Polanski – now a distant 6-1 shot to win the Holborn and St Pancras by-election next week – has given his big speech, promising to keep Andy Burnham’s Labour honest. ‘Vote Green and watch Labour move,’ he cried, citing the government’s shifts on Israel and fossil fuels.

Polanski is now the one in the hotseat with the regional broadcast political editors. James Heale is down in Brighton keeping an eye on things and rounds up the best of it here.

The Greens, somewhat bizarrely, seem to have briefed that if they can turn 30 per cent of the 2024 Labour vote in the by-election, they would then be just four points behind. ‘This is on a knife edge,’ a source says. If the bookies are to be believed, it must be a very wide knife.

The Greens aren’t the only ones speaking without fully digesting the implications of their words. After Burnham sought to downplay the eight-year probe which found wrongdoing on a gargantuan scale by Manchester City, Downing Street was forced to issue a clarification.

Then, earlier today, came the news that the PM has appointed the ubiquitous Louise Casey to oversee efforts to find money to pay for his grand social care plans. It turns out that tweaking the triple lock on pensions will only........

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