Excellent, tittle-tattle is my speciality. Guido’s bull-shit detector has been flashing red as the comrade’s conference kicked off. Blair telling Frostie it’s all nonsense and soap opera, Brown this morning saying taxes had not gone up and the general secretary of the Labour Party attacking “those people in the political elite who would rather that politics was left to them.”

One bit of rare honesty came from Margaret Hodge, admitting that many traditional Labour supporters are racist and that the government must no longer send mixed messages out of fear of losing their support. She didn’t say they wear appalling shell-suits and some of them don’t even know how to use a knife and fork properly, but you knew what she meant.

Noticeable lack of speakers using the word “comrade” – where have all the socialists gone?