Helmut Seifert on castrating the 57-year-old lover of his 17-year-old daughter…

“I saw it as my duty as a father.”

Guido understands that the plates are starting to move within the Portsmouth LibDems concerning the disgraced Mike Hancock, who is not only their MP but also a senior councillor. The LibDem Council Leader Gerald Vernon Jackson was said to have been rallying support for the battered MP at his Christmas Party on Saturday night. However just hours later the Sunday paper bombardment hit the news stands, rendering the efforts in vain.

Guido has heard of more than a little disquiet from various Liberal Democrats today who are extremely unhappy with the situation. Vernon Jackson isn’t helping matters by refusing to take emergency questions, or even discuss Mr Hancock’s predicaments at tomorrow’s council meeting.

So not only do Clegg, the LibDem whips and Cowley Street have their head in the sand over the liability on their benches, it seems the LibDems are willing to turn a blind eye at every level. Hancock is a wrong ‘un and the longer he is allowed to remain a LibDem MP, the more he will bring his already beleaguered party into disrepute.

Reliable sources tell Guido that Bob Roberts, the Mirror’s political editor for the last three years, is apparently about to be announced as Ed Miliband’s director of communications.

Developing…

Lord Ashcroft’s “Dirty Politics, Dirty Times” doesn’t hold back on Red Ed’s newly appointed Murdoch fixer. If we turn to page 216 we find a nice anecdote about Tom Baldwin’s cocaine habit:

“…which regrettably seems to have become more serious in recent years. Indeed, during the Conservative Party conference in October 2001, he put Peter Stothard’s suite at the Imperial Hotel to ‘good’ use when his editor was unable to make it to the conference as planned. In the company of two journalist colleagues – Giles Coren and Alice Miles – Baldwin snorted lines of cocaine from the glass coffee table in Stothard’s suite. I certainly have no evidence that his colleagues took the drug, but I am told that Baldwin’s appetite for it was voracious and also that at least one colleague reprimanded him for his stupidity, saying: ‘What the hell do you think you are doing, Tom?’ Such is Baldwin’s craving for the drug that he had taken the not inconsiderable risk of smuggling cocaine through the hotel’s high-level security in order to feed his habit.”

Hacks sniffing coke at Tory conference? Whatever next…

Tom Baldwin is the new spinner for Ed Miliband I can reveal—
George Pascoe-Watson (@GPW_Portland) December 13, 2010

Hearing that the former Times hack’s role will apparently be “strategy” rather than frontline comms. Guido will believe that when he sees it, though perhaps they are waiting for the dust to settle from articles by Baldwin such as “Labour’s biggest donor refuses cash over fears about Miliband“. Certainly an interesting choice that has got people scratching their heads, and their noses. What’s the betting his close friendship with Alastair Campbell had something to do with him taking the job?

You would have thought Labour would have learnt from their past, and their attacks on Coulson, not to choose another spinner who is at risk of becoming the story…

On Friday Guido got a wind of a rumour that the BBC’s Jon Pienaar was being lined up to spin for Ed Miliband. He isn’t returning calls

People around Red Ed are being extremely tight lipped about it all, heightening Guido’s suspicions. Though one insider did give a hint of an announcement this week or in the first week back…

Though popular, Pienaar isn’t really the the savvy print journalist required to cultivate the Lobby. If true, one thing is certain, Pienaar will need that helmet…

UPDATE : Stephen Glover has heard the same rumours about Pienaar.