Conservatives benefit most from donations provided either before or after peers secured their seats

• Cash before honours: the Tory donors made peers who barely speak in Lords

Peers who sat in the House of Lords during the last parliament have given a combined £109m in political donations, almost £50m of which was contributed before they secured their seats.

A group of 20 super-donors – all male – have given more than £1m each.

Nearly £48m came from donors before they joined the Lords, with 91% of that sum going to the Conservatives.

Donations after joining the Lords were split more evenly, with 42% given to the Conservatives, 33% to Labour and 25% to the Lib Dems.

The top three donors were David Sainsbury, with £25m to Labour and the Lib Dems, and the Conservative supporters Anthony Bamford with £10m and Michael Farmer with £9m.

Some of the president’s Tory fans seem to find the grim reality of the president’s actions invigorating rather than terrifying

Short of emigration, what is the best option for Britain’s dazzled Trump followers now their hero confirms he is not Europe’s ally but Vladimir Putin’s? That’s assuming what we can’t in the case of Nigel Farage MP: that they do not share the US president’s well-documented weakness for a genocidal invader. Even his more respectable British acolytes have until recently finessed, quite successfully, their love of Trump with his long history of Putin-pleasing. No one more so than Boris Johnson, former prime minister, self-styled saviour of Ukraine and still Trump’s most dependable British idiot.

To Johnson’s way of thinking, detailed in numerous Daily Mail columns, it is Trump-doubters who are always the ridiculous, panicking, hysterical, whingeing headless chickens. When Trump looked likely to win the US election, Johnson likened the reaction of the “western liberal intelligentsia” to “the shriek of elderly beldames leaping on the piano stool after spying a mouse in their petticoats”. The virile Johnson was more than willing to forget that business at the US Capitol on 6 January 2021.

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Around 30% of voters say they prefer Labour for dealing with ‘allies against threats to the UK’ in boost to party leader

Keir Starmer’s approval ratings have shot up since Donald Trump returned to the White House and shocked Europe by withdrawing political and military support for Ukraine, according to the latest Opinium poll for the Observer.

Starmer’s Labour government as a whole has also gained public support for its response to the global turbulence caused by Trump’s return – on security and economic issues. His personal ratings have risen by 10% – albeit from an alarmingly low point – compared with a month ago.