The Telegraph’s weekly Peterborough diary column offers an unparalleled insight into what’s really going on at Westminster and beyond
Ed Miliband paints a sad picture of life after being Labour Party leader. He tells me on today’s Chopper’s Politics podcast: “When you lose an election, your diary sort of empties. You’re glad for a call about your PPI claim.” He was not even asked to go on I’m A Celebrity … when he lost the election in 2015, only the “after show”.
Miliband – who has forged a role as a green campaigner – has this advice to Liz Truss: you “don’t need to be a leader in order to make a difference”. He doesn’t even wish he were doing the job of Sir Keir Starmer. “Every week I go to PMQs, I think, ‘Thank God I’m not doing it’. I have PTSD when I’m at PMQs. It is a reminder of the 125 times I had to face David Cameron.”
Dominic Raab turned down reality TV offers when he was briefly out of government in September, the Justice Secretary has revealed. Raab told his staff this week that “one or two offers did come in” during his “six weeks’ sabbatical” when Liz Truss was PM.
His friends think it was Celebrity SAS – Who Dares Wins, which tantalisingly would have pitted Raab in the battle for TV viewers against his old Cabinet colleague Matt Hancock, currently in the Australian jungle filming I’m A Celebrity … Get Me Out Of Here! Action man Raab – a black belt in karate – in a two week military training programme designed to replicate the SAS selection going toe to toe with Hancock? Imagine the ratings!