Douglas Alexander is said to be furious that his attempt to introduce trials for his poll-tax-on-wheels scheme has been derailed by a Downing Street e-petition, which is approaching one and a half million signatures – up 100,000 in one day.

“We cannot be seen to bend, but we have to listen. There is a difference between listening and capitulating,” said an anonymous government source yesterday. The unnamed source (not a million miles from Douglas Alexander) is said to have claimed that “whoever came up with this idea might be a prat”. Guido emailed his friend Tom Steinberg of MySociety for a comment about that on Monday, but unusually no reply has been received from Tom. He is presumably very busy.

Ooofy Wegg-Prosser is the “web-genius” at No. 10. He apparently saw the e-petition plan as an answer to the interactivity and popularity of WebCameron and, err, Guido. Well that worked brilliantly didn’t it Ooofy?