Guido can’t help thinking that the row over Fred’s £8 million pension is a contrived bit of spin to distract headlines away from the £300 billion bet that HM Treasury is taking on RBS. Frankly Fred’s £8 / £16 million is neither here nor there in comparison to what the government is committing the taxpayer to underwriting. If this goes pear shaped Iceland will be nothing in comparison.

Usually the convention is that a PPS who opposes a government motion resigns for the reason that technically they are part of the government, even though they are unpaid. The FT’s Westminster blog lists ten PPS who have signed the EDM opposing Mandelson’s plans to make the Royal Mail pay:

David Wright (PPS to John Hutton), David Anderson (Bill Rammell), Claire Curtis-Thomas (Baroness Scotland of Asthal), David Hamilton (Ed Miliband), Mark Hendrick (Jack Straw), Stephen Hesford (Vera Baird), Sharon Hodgson (Dawn Primarolo), Ashok Kumar (Hilary Benn), John Mann (Tessa Jowell), Stephen Pound (Stephen Timms)

Laura Moffatt is a former PPS to Alan Johnson, her opposition might be a sign of where he really stands. Nick Brown, Gordon’s long time henchman and now chief whip is also said to be not keen mon the bill. It is getting a bit like the dying days of the Major regime when euro-sceptics openly defied the government…

Crisis, what banking crisis? Yesterday the City minister Lord Myners was showing off his art collection to the Labour glitterati, tonight John Prescott will be in the heart of the financial district partying with the rest of the London Labour Party to raise money from bankers at a £500-a-table “Gala Dinner”

For public consumption Labour are bashing the bankers whilst privately they will be dancing to their tunes, still hoping to tap them up for donations. Tonight’s gala venue is next door to Lehman’s building in Canary Wharf, so perhaps they won’t raise quite as much money as they hope – particularly since any bankers still with jobs are unlikely to have cash to spare from non-existent bonuses. Unless of course you negotiated your exit package with Alastair Darling, in which case you are sorted for life…

Baron Myners said recently “I have met more masters of the universe than I would like to, people who were grossly over-rewarded and did not recognise that. Some of that is pretty ­unpalatable. They are people who have no sense of the broader society around them.”