It was hard to feel a great deal of sympathy when the so-called “Beergate” row came back to bite Keir Starmer. Having demanded the resignation of Boris Johnson and Rishi Sunak when they were issued with fixed penalty notices over lockdown rule breaches, Starmer found himself hoisted by his own petard when Durham police launched their own investigation into him. Starmer’s promise to resign if he is issued with a fine seems more designed to exert pressure on the police not to proceed than a genuine demonstration of “integrity.”

Tempting as it was to indulge in schadenfreude at Starmer’s expense, there was really only one story that should have dominated this week. A report from the Food Foundation revealed that two million adults in the UK had, within the last month, gone a whole day without eating. An estimated 7.3 million adults are now estimated to be food insecure, an increase of 57 percent since January, when the same figure stood at a still scandalous 4.7 million.

With energy bills rocketing and food prices also rising sharply amid falling real wages, the study found that millions more — among them 2.6 million children — are eating smaller meals than they were, or are simply not eating when hungry. The situation has become so desperate for so many people that food banks are reportedly asking that charity food parcels include no food that needs to be stored in a fridge or freezer or that has to be prepared using a cooker.