HERE’S a meeting of crutches from Wednesday night’s Benugo meeting in Highgate, as Labour MP Keir Starmer meets a man wearing a t-shirt with the slogan ‘don’t vote, it only encourages them’. We haven’t quite got to the bottom as to how Keir ruptured his ligaments; he told the meeting that he’d been attacked by a ninja on Hampstead Heath, although others suggest he got the baseball bat treatment from the Labour whips after voting against HS2 last month.

Either way, Keir’s time on crutches has given him the perfect excuse for being noticeably absent for the football re-match between Camden Labour and the New Journal last week, a match in which his side was thrashed 13-0 (yes, folks, it finished THIRTEEN-NIL). As mean as it seems to the players who did turn out – Yarde, Wood, Rosenberg et al – this hilariously-large defeat was blamed on key players being away.

Excuses, excuses.

After all, on the eve of the match, luckless team captain Councillor Awale Olad tweeted at the newspaper: “It’s not too late to forfeit the game and avoid embarrassment.” His contribution in Labour’s soccer meltdown was to balloon not one but two free kicks over the fence at the Talacre sports centre last Friday.