Ros Taylor didn’t want the job – she wants “to focus on her writing” – and she is currently ghosting Chris Bryant’s diary very well. Think she has it down perfectly, all though it is difficult to capture the arsiness of the man as well as Newsnight did on Tuesday.

Deborah Summers comes from the Scottish Herald. Word is that the Guardian is going to merge the online politics and Westminster Lobby team – so basically the online team will become glorified data entry operators and paid accordingly.

Blair yesterday reminisced about the bad old 80s, how crap Labour used to be and how things have changed now. Guido dug out his old election leaflet from 1983. Check out that grin!

1. Prescription charges are up 21% since Blair got in, the tax burden is the highest it has ever been after an N.I. rise to pay for the NHS.
2. Blair has the British army garrisoned in Iraq and Afghanistan – costing us tens of billions of an overstretched military budget as the situation worsens.
3. New Labour.
4. £30 Billion.

How things have changed…

The was a touching scene the night before last in Albert Square, Manchester. Lord Levy was consoling a very worried man. Sleazy Levy had one hand on the man’s shoulder and the other gripping his elbow as a taxi waited. They must have had the meter on the taxi running for ages since they were having a very animated discussion about something. Levy was quite chipper whereas his friend was disgruntled and worried. “Don’t worry; it’ll all be all right; don’t worry” Levy assured the troubled man.

So far nothing that you have not read already on Iain Dale’s blog earlier. Guido believes that the weepy man was none other than Nick Bowes, formerly the Labour Party’s Head of High Value Fundraising. Nick is a reader of this blog from his desk at the metal bashers and widget makers trade association the EEF, he is up in Manchester on their behalf.

Guido has emailed Nick to corroborate this piece but has as yet no reply to his questions. Let us hope the detectives got more answers out of him…

See also here and here.

The Met has decided that their investigation following complaints made to Scotland Yard by Windsor-based businessman George Bathurst and the LibDem’s Norman Baker has found “not sufficient basis” for criminal charges. Maybe Guido should send them a copy of the “The Little Red Book of New Labour Sleaze“?

Ring, Ring, Ring, Ring…
Guido Fawkes: Morning Michael
Michael Crick: Who is that?
GF: Guido
MC: Oh, crikey
GF: Who are you voting for tonight in Battersea?
MC: I don’t know yet…
GF: You were at Oxford weren’t you, aren’t you contemporaneous with any of them? It is an Oxford slate.
MC: Don’t think so. Well I have met Louise Bagshawe, she wrote to me outraged after my Jeffrey Archer book came out.
GF: Really?
MC: Yes, took me out to tea at a very grand hotel and told me I’d got it all wrong and how he had been very nice to her when she was starting out.
GF: Ha!
MC: I think she has seen the light now.

Crick lives in the constituency and told Guido he is probably going to take his daughter along. He is “not sure” if he is going to take a camera-crew along with him. He also told Guido that in July 1976 he wrote an article in the New Statesman advocating primaries. Sometimes policy takes time to implement Michael…