The National:

A FUTURE Labour peer speaking about her own party on BBC Scotland probably didn’t expect to be called out. But that’s exactly what happened to Ayesha Hazarika when she appeared on the Sunday Show.

The former advisor to Gordon Brown had been speaking about Labour as if it was not a party she is closely linked to – let alone one she is about to represent for life in the unelected House of Lords.

Asked if people know what Keir Starmer stands for, the soon-to-be-peer Hazarika said: “I think the question on that, there is an argument, a narrative, that says people don’t really know what he stands for, but on the other hand any time the public anywhere round the country are coming in contact with the ballot box, they are voting for him.”

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Coming into contact with a ballot box won’t be something Hazarika has to worry about once she’s taken her seat in the Lords.

Either way, she went on: “I would say what the Labour party is doing effectively is putting forward an offer that people like. They’re putting forward candidates that – Rochdale aside – candidates that people are moving towards.

“Their ground operation has got a lot better. The overall message has got a lot better.”

Luckily, National columnist Andrew Tickell was on hand.

Asked to come in on what Hazarika had said, Tickell began: “Can I just clarify, you referred to the Labour Party as ‘they’ throughout that. Do you mean ‘we’?”

Responding, Hazarika said: “I suppose it’s ‘they/we’, but currently I’m not in the House of Lords.”

Tickell said it was a “curious feature” of Hazarika’s contribution that she had spoken of Labour as something she was not a part of.

In response, the soon-to-be-peer – who the BBC host had announced as such – said she was “not in the leadership of the Labour party”.

“I would say ‘they’ because I’m not in the inner sanctum of the decision-making process,” Hazarika added.

She’ll certainly be a party member though ...