Lisa Nandy takes aim at BT

The wine was flowing last night at Labour conference as delegates toasted the fall of Boris Johnson. And before Mr S staggered off to Dawn Butler’s Jamaica night – where ‘Beijing Barry’ Gardiner enlivened the crowd with his dancing on the DJ decks – it was time to go behind enemy lines at the New Statesman annual party.

This year’s star attraction at the Museum of Liverpool was the shadow levelling up secretary Lisa Nandy, a woman who has never been shy at making her feelings known. And it was in that spirit that the former Labour foreign affairs spokesman poked fun at herself and new Prime Minister Liz Truss by telling a room of hacks, bag-carriers and assorted hangers-on:

If you’d told me two years ago that a woman could emerge from a very divided party, take on the foreign brief, and rise to become leader, I wouldn’t have believed you.