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Another day, another total headache for the organisers of Labour Live. The latest fiasco from the “politics festival” due to be held this weekend, is that its drinks provider, the Workers Beer Company, will not supply kegs on grounds that the numbers do not justify their order.

The company was chosen because of their association with Corbyn (who, in truth, is teetotal) and the socialist cause. At last year’s Glastonbury, Corbyn popped up at the company’s Solstice Bar and poured a pint. “Whatever you’re serving, I’m buying,” said someone in the crowd to the Labour leader.

His bar skills will certainly not be a feature of this weekend. Over the past few weeks, Labour Live has failed to whip up the necessary hype and organisers have struggled to offload tickets. Only a reported 3,000 out of 20,000 have sold — leading Workers Beer Company to refuse to supply kegs “as they don’t believe it can be justified based on the projected numbers attending”, a source says.

They have informed Karie Murphy , senior aide to Corbyn, that “beer kegs are used only for high volume bars”, according to the source. Murphy is intimately involved with Labour Live and has “gone to war with the Workers Beer Company over their decision”, says the source, as it’s “her baby”.

She is not the only one who will be angry. Those guests who have paid £35 for a ticket are already cross with the offloading of free tickets. The Workers Beer Company gives staff the chance to attend festivals for free, in return for their labour.

There has been further embarrassment this morning, with claims that deputy leader Tom Watson will not be attending.

This morning a source confirmed that while the Workers Beer Company will provide beer, there will be no kegs. Labour Live will instead be offering “warm plastic bottles of Carling”, a source grumbles.

Punch, Judy and a real puppet show

Tom Hamilton and Ayesha Hazarika launched their new book, Punch & Judy Politics, in South Bank restaurant Cucina, and Ed Miliband, whom the pair advised when he was Labour leader, showed his support. “It’s Tuesday night, I’m with Tom and Ayesha and all I can think about is thank f*** we’re not preparing for PMQs,” he said. Hamilton used to play David Cameron in PMQ prep when Miliband was Labour leader. “Tom was a better David Cameron than David Cameron,” Ed said. “Actually, he was a better David Cameron than I was Ed Miliband.”

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Rupert Everett was at the Picturehouse Central for a preview screening of The Happy Prince last night. Everett depicts Oscar Wilde, but an audience member asked who he would like to play him if his own life were ever adapted for the screen. Everett thought. “Harry Styles,” he decided.

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Douglas Carswell, the ex-MP who defected from the Conservatives to Ukip in 2014, is usually intolerant of journalists who ask him for comment. But he freely offered his own last night. “What a dick,” he said of Dr Phillip Lee, the minister who resigned and then abstained on a crucial Brexit amendment yesterday. Rebels are so annoying, aren’t they Douglas?

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Wine writer Steven Spurrier launched his new book Wine, A Way Of Life, at 67 Pall Mall last night. “My grandson Seamus asked, ‘Why are you famous?’” he said. “So I wrote the book to answer his question.”

James' bottom line

The BBC’s diplomatic correspondent James Landale will begin the summer holidays with a swim between Asia and Europe. He has spent months training for the four-mile race across the Bosporus on July 22 in aid of the Ellen MacArthur Cancer Trust and the Nasio Trust. “It involves swimming front crawl non-stop in open tidal water along Istanbul’s busy waterway,” he says proudly.

Pippa Middleton did the race in 2014, taking just over an hour to finish. Landale says: “It prompted a friend to ask me if this midlife crisis was all about me wanting my own well-toned bottom.”

Meghan’s Suits pal goes bridal as the Brits invade Abigail’s party

Abigail Spencer, actor and close friend of the Duchess of Sussex, was out with the Brit pack at Chateau Marmont in Los Angeles last night. She met plain Meghan Markle, as she was then, at an audition ten years ago. They later starred together in the US series Suits.

Then last month Spencer pole-vaulted into the nation’s consciousness when she took a seat in the chapel beside Serena Williams and Amal Clooney at the royal wedding.

Last night Spencer, wearing white, was with fellow actors Alice Eve and Suki Waterhouse, who recently starred in James Franco’s dystopian film Future World, and Nicky Hilton, who married James Rothschild in London in 2015. The evening was held in aid of Max Mara’s Women in Film Face of the Future awards.

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SW1A

Jeremy Corbyn will be at the V&A this week to see the Frida Kahlo exhibition, a Labour source tells me. Kahlo the mono-browed Mexican artist and communist, had an affair with the Russian revolutionary Leon Trotsky — whose “complete rehabilitation” Corbyn called for in 1988. Theresa May is also a Kahlo fan. She wore a bracelet with a portrait of the painter during her conference speech.

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Lord Ian Duncan, under secretary of state for Scotland, recalls his days canvassing with a fellow lord during an Edinburgh election. Visiting house-proud constituents, the unnamed lord praised their “lovely flat” then, to Duncan’s horror, asked: “But where do you go on the weekends?”

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Tulip Siddiq, Labour MP for Hampstead and Kilburn, has been reading her two-year-old daughter Azalea Five on Brexit Island. “She grumbled and cried throughout,” Siddiq told us at Parliament’s World Book Day reception.

Quote of the Day

‘Perhaps we could help the Bengal tigers by feeding them members of the House of Lords’

Boris Johnson, aghast that there are more Lords than Bengal tigers, has a modest proposal