Whatever happens to her marriage, her political career is over, or very soon will be. Charitable as it is in allowing the likes of Eds Miliband and Balls onto its front benches, the Labour Party’s goodwill cannot possibly stretch as far as retaining an MP who announces to the country without a hint of regret that she chose a school for her son with a view to sneaking into the stationery cupboard with her tastiest constituent seconds after she’d dropped off little Toby at his classroom door.

Just in case Labour are feeling especially lenient about both infidelity and exhibitionism at the moment (you never know—they might have heard that the Tories are making moves in that direction and be keen to follow suit), Saint Paula made sure to add another choice revelation to her spontaneous media combustion:

If Damon Blundy wants to add luster to his sad little life by trashing me week after week in his column, can I suggest that he judges me for the shoplifting problem I had as a teenager that lasted into my early twenties? Oh, sorry, I forgot—Blundy doesn’t know about that because I never got caught. Perhaps he’d like to admit that he has no idea what kind of person I am—good, bad or indifferent—just as I have no idea what kind of person he is, though I do know, as we all do, that he chooses to behave for much of the time like a vile bigot. But we mustn’t let his bigotry, disgusting though it is, blind us to his foolishness. It is tempting to assume that those who offend and upset us are telling hard truths that we can’t stand to hear, but sometimes, as in the case of Blundy, they are as wrong as they are unpleasant. Only a fool would imagine that my decision to send my son to a state school was in any way controversial or a matter of public interest. Thanks to my relationship with Harry, I was in the fortunate position of knowing enough about Gorse Edge and its staff to trust it completely, but even if that hadn’t been the case, I would have sent Toby to his local state primary school because I believe in state education.