Why is the British taxpayer picking up the tab for what the organisers said candidly “is the largest ever international gathering of international centre-left leaders, policy-makers and thinkers”?

Oops. That kind of blows the lid off it being an inter-governmental, non-partisan affair doesn’t it? If it is an inter-govermental affair, why is Wilf Stevenson on the guest list? Since when was the director of the Smith Institute an “independent and non-partisan” think-tank that has nothing to do with Gordon Brown, part of the government?

This is just a jamboree for the international parties of the tax and spend policy persuasion, paid for by taxpayers. You can be sure that they will not be holding back on the wine list either. What Guido wants to know is: how much this junket for global social democracy is costing British taxpayers?

More soon…

UPDATE : Unbelievably delegates at the conference’s plush Grove Hotel just laughed and clapped as the Chilean finance minister talked about the “poetic justice” of the subprime crisis. What planet are these people on? Millions of people around the world are losing their homes and they laugh?