Communication is everything in politics, as Labour’s overactive press office knows all too well. Earlier this month, Keir Starmer did an interview on LBC with Nick Ferrari in which the latter asked whether ‘A siege is appropriate? Cutting off power? Cutting off water?’ in Gaza. Starmer replied that ‘I think that Israel does have that right. It is an ongoing situation. Obviously everything should be done within international law, but I don’t want to step away from the core principles that Israel has right to defend herself.’

Cue much fury within the Labour party about Starmer justifying Israel’s water and electricity blockade of Gaza. His spokesman has since claimed that the comment was in response to a previous question on Israel’s right to defend itself. Steerpike leaves his readers to judge who was right. But while missteps in interviews are one thing, it seems that some Keirleaders can’t even get their lines in parliament right.

For today’s Playbook notes that Florence Eshalomi, Labour’s Cabinet Office spokesman, yesterday called for an ‘immediate humanitarian ceasefire’ in the Commons which, er, is certainly not official party policy. Fortunately for Eshalomi, the Hansard reporters were on hand to provide some much-needed clean up. Thus, the official transcript has now been amended to say ‘immediate humanitarian corridor’. There’s nothing new in this of course: translating John Prescott’s gibberish into English was famously meant to challenge even the most gifted stenographer.

But Labour perhaps ought to not make it a habit. For Eshalomi’s blunder comes less than a week after David Lammy repeatedly referred to ‘the bombing of the al-Ahli mosque in Gaza yesterday’ – to groans from his parliamentary colleagues. In actual fact, the missile hit a hospital, run by the Anglican Church.

people watching in the gallery and at home shouting “it’s a hospital” at Lammy as he repeatedly says the Al-Ahli mosque

— Bethany Dawson (@bethanymrd) October 18, 2023

Rather than simply misspeak, the Shadow Foreign Secretary then repeated his error, telling the House that ‘Today we stand united in mourning the death of hundreds of innocent Palestinian civilians at the al-Ahli mosque’ with several MPs interjecting to correct him. Yet to read a copy of that day’s Hansard proceedings, you would never know of Lammy’s repeated errors. As the academic Adrian Hilton noted ‘They have intervened to make David Lammy appear more knowledgeable, totally erasing MPs’ interjection to correct him.’

David Lammy or the humble Hansard scribe? Steerpike leaves it to his readers to judge which of these are better in their diplomatic duties…