Ed Miliband is struggling to raise the cash compared to his brother’s formidable flesh-pressing and begging efforts. Without those Blairite purse-string holders behind you, every donation counts. So £2,500 in cash would be greatly appreciated. Two payments of exactly the same amount stand out though. They must be very loyal supporters to provide a third of the campaign costs so far:

And who are these generous Thorntons? Well Ed’s girlfriend Justine’s Mum and Dad of course…

Ed Balls has been on the phone to a friendly ear to unequivocally deny he was behind the Burnham briefing Guido mentioned earlier:

There is no truth in these allegations, in these smears about me or my supporters. It is complete nonsense. Andy and I get on very well and no one from my team was involved in these briefings. Andy Burnham and I spoke this morning and we both agreed that any suggestion of him pulling is out rubbish. We both agreed that no one surrounding me has made this allegation. And both of us think there is mischief being made — but it’s not coming from my team or his team. It’s coming from a third party.

But then he would say that wouldn’t he, or is a Miliband being clever?

For all the hustings and the hype, what really makes leadership campaigns successful is the hard cash. And no surprise that favourite David Miliband has raised nearly five times that of his closest financial rival Ed Balls.

• David Miliband -£185,000
• Ed Balls – £28,000
• Ed Miliband – £15,000

Abbot and Burnham haven’t even raised enough to need declaring yet. Ouch.

So where is Miliband’s money coming from? He has declared that there are three Lords pulling his strings. Blair’s old chum Lord Sainsbury gave £20,000, Lord Alli used a proxy company to give £50,000 and Lord Puttnam threw in a cheeky £10,000. The novelist Ken Follett gave Balls the bulk of his money. Cha-ching.

So it’s Baron Prezza of Kingston-on-Hull. And more importantly Lady Prescott too. A quiet and subdued Prescott has just taken his oath. The millionaire didn’t look very happy during the whole process.

Must have been all that “flummery”…

This is from last night, but Guido was waiting for decent-quality footage to appear online of his old mucker Tom Watson losing it in the Commons and managing to break pretty much all established Parliamentary protocol in one sentence. It’s fair to say he doesn’t like Michael Gove very much:

Note the apology was only out of “deference” to Bercow, who for obvious reasons wouldn’t like the term pip-squeak.

The EU takes taxes from British taxpayers without any democratic legitimacy and then redistributes them around Europe, much of it ends up back in Britain as regional grants for infrastructure projects.

Out of gratitude to this complex laundering system, these infrastructure projects have to fly the European flag and paste their branding across signage. On top of the £6 billion the UK is already sending to Brussels this year, a further “fine“ of €200 million has been levied for failure to adhere to these rules. Here’s an idea, why not just keep the money here in the first place?

Andy Burnham reportedly “nearly fell out of his chair” when he read in the papers that he was considering pulling out of the Labour leadership race to avoid the embarrassment of coming last. Guido “nearly fell out of his chair” last month when he read Ed Balls describe the political tactics he is an expert in as “pretty unedifying”. He went on to say “there will be no off-the-record briefings from anybody involved with me.” Funny then that this morning fingers are being pointed at Team Balls as the source of the what Burnham describes as “a malicious briefing”. Ed’s “I’ve changed” act was never going to last long. Here comes the mudslinging…

UPDATE : Latest Labour leadership odds from Political Smarkets:

David Miliband 63.6%
Ed Miliband 23.8%
Ed Balls 8%
Andy Burnham 2.1%
Diane Abbott 2%

Balls is fighting the most aggressive, high visibility campaign…

Ed Miliband, manifesto author and former SpAd to Gordon Brown, says…

‘I am the candidate of change’