He is 74, she was a 17 year-old nightclub dancer who came to one of his parties last year, for which she says she was paid €7,000. Later, when Ruby was arrested, Berlusconi called the police and got her sprung.  Under Italian law sex with a prostitute under the age of 18 is a criminal offence. Ruby says they didn’t have sex, he says it is laughable and politically motivated left-wing prosecutors are trying to get him. Who to believe?

Over forty pages of signatures from the Sunlight Centre’s petition to have Eric Illsley resign with immediate effect have just been delivered to the disgraced Member for Barnsley’s office:

More than 2,000 people demanded that Illsley applies for the Chiltern Hundreds immediately. They don’t want him to wait until the end of the month to quit, as he plans to do, which would enable him to get his hands on over £5,000 more from the taxpayers he has already robbed once. Illsley claims to be winding up his office, the extent of which seemed to be occupied by one bag carrier sitting in a darkened room looking at the W4MP jobs page…

Today’s winner can get their hands on a copy of Big Brother Watch, The State of Civil Liberties in Modern Britain – a collection of essays edited by Alex Deane.

By winner, Guido means something that is actually funny by the way…

Tory high command briefs against Sayeeda Warsi…

“…you can’t put her on the radio. She’s just a disaster waiting to happen.”

Ed Miliband has jumped on the town hall meeting bandwagon. Jacket off, unseen questions, no holds barred – right out of the Cameron Direct playbook. Having said that, the questions from the audience are remarkably on message. Though outside the room it seems Ed is having some problems getting traction in terms of viewing figures:

Unlucky for some…

The end result was Labour 14,718 (42%), LibDem 11,160 (31.9%), Con 4,481 (12.8%), UKIP 2,543 (5.6%), BNP 1560 (4.5%). The swing from LibDems to Labour was 4.9%, turnout was a reasonable 48%. The LibDem vote was steady, up fractionally on the general election, the Conservative vote halved, UKIP’s vote was up 40% on the general election and the BNP’s vote was down 22%.

Labour will say they did well, so they should in this seat, Clegg will point to the increased LibDem share of the vote and say they didn’t do bad. The Tories will feign disappointment. UKIP demonstrates once again that Tories have a place to go if they can’t stomach the coalition…

UPDATE: Labour are spinning that this is a clear vindication that the economic policies of the coalition are wrong. Not quite. If you add the Conservative and Liberal numbers together, more people are in favour of the coalition. A tired and tetchy Sayeeda Warsi is blaming the Tory-right for moaning. However, given the order came from above her head to move over for the LibDems, her digs at the Tory right, who she knows hate her, look as opportunistic as they do absurd.