The New Statesman is running an implausible story that relations between Dave and Boris are ‘at breaking point’. Predictably, it’s written by James Macintyre.  Silly season must have started before recess for him.

How can we take seriously anything that comes from James Macintyre? He was already under suspicion of being a willing conduit for Labour spin inventions after he reported – unsourced – a claim that Obama thought Cameron was a “lightweight” – a story that Guido knows to be an invention.  Ask yourself – does young Macintyre really have Whitehouse contacts that would provide him with that kind of insight – if it were genuine?  His journalistic credibity vanished altogether when his email exchanges with Derek Draper were made public in Private Eye. They revealed Macintyre’s desperate disappointment at not becoming a Labour SpAd for Ed Miliband. Wily Draper played his former intimate, young James, like a sucker and “borrowed” several thousand quid from him to boot. Gullible Macintyre remains owed the money.

Macintyre has no Tory contacts at a senior level around Boris or Dave, this will within ten months prove something of a career crippling problem for the political editor of a serious political weekly. In view of Macintyre’s latest spin invention, we can safely assume he’s back on the hunt for a government job.

UPDATE : Boris has publicly called the story piffle. A source not a million miles from Cameron’s office was (via email) scathing about Macintyre after this story went up. Boy Macintyre himself has been in touch to complain that he didn’t claim his source for his “Obama thinks Cameron is a lightweight” story was Whitehouse, it was apparently a “diplomatic source”. It was transparent spin is what it was.