Guido did hint at this back in June when there were febrile rumours of injunctions, newspapers camped on doorsteps and even a bastard baby Boris.

The Mirror says there is no suggestion of an affair and then suggests exactly that, while the high-minded Guardian uses the excuse of Helen McIntyre’s unannounced involvement in his “Olympian Erection” to justify its coverage, quoting a Boris spokesman saying that it was the Mayor’s “enthusiasm for private philanthropy” that meant her appointment as a fundraiser on the project had never been publicly announced. Boris clearly likes a bit of “private philanthropy” on the side.

Over at The Evening Standard they explain how this simple ‘friendship’ drove McIntyre apart from her billionaire partner Pierre Rolin. She later reported Rolin for harassment – but not before she’d found time to shag date William Cash, son of Tory MP Bill. So she clearly has a penchant for Tories.

Currently the City Hall game-plan is to say nothing, a plan that has worked up until this morning, given that the rumours have been swirling around since before the general election. Nobody is likely to confess to having had an affair and it is hard to see Ken making an issue of it given the five kids he has fathered by three different women (impressively managing to get two women simultaneously pregnant). Neither is Lembit likely to raise sexual athletics as an issue. The London mayoral contest is not going to be lacking for virility…

It could still get a little embarrassing for Boris, Charles Moore cracks this joke about Boris in speeches “I told Boris I don’t care what he does in his private life and he told me ‘Nor do I’ “.  There is also an attractive American woman who escaped to New York and entertains friends in Manhattan with anecdotes about her pursuit by Boris. His chat up line to her she says was, “I limit myself to one mistress per annum. How would you like to be Miss 2009?” Guido reckons Boris is nevertheless electorally bullet-proof, since it won’t be news to the voters that he is a serial shagger…

Alex and Ellie have come up with a risky new strategy to shut up those right-wing bloggers once and for all. Take their “Balls out” slogan at face value and show myself off to the world in all my glory. Genius idea, me on on Gok telling young men “How to Look Good Naked”.  After all it was as much me as Sarah who smartened Gordon up when he became leader. Gove would never allow voters to scrutinise him so closely. There was a look in Ellie’s eyes when she put the idea to me.

Got to be careful though. Have password locked my Blackberry, not just because of the voicemail messages from a sobbing Scotsman complaining I wasn’t returning his calls.

Taking Ellie to Coventry tonight, hope she won’t be too disappointed missing Gok and Balls on “How to Look Good Naked”.  Will have to rush back to take on Andrew Neil on This Week. Packed some of Gordon’s old pills and cyanoacrylate glue for the eyelids.

I will not blink, I will be leader.

*As leaked to Guido.

Deborah Mattinson, formerly the Brown bunker’s favourite pollster*, was wailing last night to a Mirror hack and the evil Fabian’s Sunda Katawala that “I’m still worried ‘Labour wrecked economy’ is now accepted wisdom… Labour cannot afford to wait until new leader is in place to get strong economic defence up. It must start now… Labour lacks a simple message to defend its record. Without it Labour takes the blame and loses the argument… Labour is losing the argument on the economy”. Deborah, there is a simple reason that this is the accepted wisdom. It is the truth.

All Labour governments end in economic disaster, with higher unemployment at the end than the beginning, as Margaret Thatcher pointed out,“The problem with socialism is that, sooner or later, you run out of other people’s money.”

The competition is to win a copy of  The Big Red Book of New Labour Sleaze for the most amusing 140 character Tweetable account of Labour’s economic record. Post your entries in the comments section. Guido’s decision, as always, is final.

*How is her firm doing winning government contracts nowadays? She claims in her new book “Talking To A Brick Wall“ they were won on merit. She was incredibly successful in winning millions of pounds of government business when Gordon was in power. Completely unrelated her firm did personal polling for Gordon for free. Fancy that. Wonder how much business she is winning “on merit” from the government now?

David Miliband is being less and less coded in his criticism of Brown, by New Labour’s standards of neo-Leninist loyalty these muted criticisms of the past are pretty strong. Following on from his Keir Hardie speech it looks increasingly like he and Mandelson intend to bury Brown and his allies with the historical truth.

UPDATE : The Blairite plot thickens, Tony himself is letting it be known that contrary to reports, “I specifically have said to all who have asked that I’m NOT angry!” that Mandy’s book is out. Let the bloodletting begin…

Lord Mandelson told Radio 4′s Today programme this morning…

“It is only available in all good book shops and on Amazon today.”

In a move much awaited by polling geeks, YouGov has launched its YouGov/Sun daily tracker, the innovation which they hope to popularise is the daily approval score. It asks a simple “Do you approve or disapprove of the Government’s record to date?”

Last night it recorded a 2010 high for the Tories on 43% and a 2010 low for LibDems on 15%, a result which will be seized upon by Labour and worry the left of the LibDems. In a time of coalition government it is the Approval Score which has the potential to become the most useful tracker of public opinion. Guido suspects as spending cuts bite it will become very closely followed…

Some time back David Miliband did a public consultation wiki and it was over-run by the, errm, public. The public who over-whelmingly mocked him and wrecked the consultation process. It was a bit of fun.

Surprise, surprise this government is trying the same thing and it is getting suggestions that don’t go well down with Guardian readers. Like cutting off one finger per pickpocketing offence – which will clearly have a deterrent effect.

Some suggestions are just fun: Repeal the law of universal gravitation.

One suggestion Guido would really like to see happen : Decriminalise Cannabis. The laws on cannabis in this country are ridiculous, the Prime Minister was a dope-smoker in his Eton days, he knows that the scaremongering about it is ridiculous. Possession and growing for personal use, at the very least, should be decriminalised, as should medical use.

The fact that the public’s suggestions are often illiterate and ill-thought out ideas doesn’t mean that in among the jokes and madness there won’t be some good ideas. It will be messy, it will be a bit chaotic, so what? It doesn’t matter so long as we find some diamonds in the mud.

It is the same with comments on this blog. Temperamentally Guido would prefer it to be totally free without any limits. In practice the place would be over-run by 9-11 troofers, Jew-haters, Jihadis, muslim-haters, old fashioned racists and loonie lefties, who unable to get an audience of their own, try to parasite off Guido’s readership.

The limited software moderation we have was introduced to stop them and to prevent the likes of Derek Draper accusing Guido of deliberately promoting whatever was written in the comments.

In truth Guido is sceptical that it really matters what some window-licker writes in the blog’s comments and the majority of the blog’s readers don’t read the comments. People who complain to Guido that they are offended really have (a) no right to not be offended (b) no obligation to read the blog.  Some of the comments can be tear-jerkingly funny – one BBC staffer confided that reading the comments here was “bad for her soul”. Does it really matter that much?

See also Get Your Own Blogs, The Economics of Blog Comments.