Guido was following up, what turned out to be, a dud tip-off last week that gave him reason to put a call into the Abbott campaign. Or at least try to. It turns out it’s quite hard to find any contact information on her website, in fact there are no details. After a quick ring around, the consensus was that the person he needed to talk to was Sally Scott, who handles Diane’s media. All very well except the number he was given was a parliamentary one…

Abbott has barely raised any money for her campaign, but that does not give her an excuse to flout the very clear rules that state you cannot use your parliamentary office, phone lines or staff hours for campaigning in an internal party election. Abbott’s website for her constituents states Scott handles her media concerning her job as an MP. She is breaking the rules if there is no defined crossover. Guido cannot see how his chat on Friday, about Andy Burnham, with a publicly funded spinner, Sally Scott, could have aided Abbot’s constituents in Hackney in any way.