Peter Hain had a shocker on Question Time, being jeered and booed by the audience for his take on Britain selling arms to Libya:

If we found, as we did in some instances that they were not being used for the license they had been granted for… If that’s the case, then it was wrong to sell them and we wouldn’t do it again…

Which would of course be too late…

Hain’s ministerial record on arms dealing is far from squeaky clean:

Peter Hain, the Foreign Office minister with responsibility for Africa, yesterday told The Independent on Sunday that the Government would investigate the deal if any substantiated allegations were made… “nobody could object to Britain selling arms to South Africa”.

On the BBC’s Today programme ….

…the Foreign Office minister Peter Hain gave his personal assurance that new Labour had never sold arms to any government that used them for internal repression. At last month’s Farnborough arms fair, weapons and all manner of war equipment were on offer to Pakistan, Indonesia, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Turkey…

The Campaign Against the Arms Trade said: “The public were outraged and shocked in the role the UK had in being a major supplier of arms to countries like Indonesia. The fact that the government finally brought in an embargo given the atrocities in East Timor just recently shows that the public has become very concerned about where we are selling arms too.” However, Foreign Office Minister Peter Hain insisted the government had acted ethically and openly in its arms sales policy.

His conversion to the cause of peace seems to coincide with him being out of office…

Ed Balls’ admirers describe him as “combative”, others say he is an unpleasant, duplicitous, lying bully. Whatever your view there is no doubt that he turned a nominally safe seat into an ultra-marginal after an election campaign that focused on his merits and personality.

Unfortunately for Balls as a result he now has to spend weekend after weekend working his constituency, knocking on doors to try and bolster his support. Balls is only too aware that his poor performance in his constituency undermines his authority in the Labour Party. Yet no matter how much he smiles and glad hands his true personality still comes out. Balls admits to damaging his old constituency office and leaving it in a mess, he has offered to pay some £500 towards making the mess good. The local businessman who was his landlord says the damages are nearer £2,000.

If Balls had any sense he would negotiate a compromise, why get into an embarrassing court case with a local businessmen with all the inevitable bad publicity in the local press (pictured)? Instead, because of his “combative” nature he has ended up in court fighting Mr Sampson who says “It is nothing personal to do with him, I’m not being malicious, it is purely business”. With Balls it is always personal…

Cameron’s profound reply when asked what he’d like to say to Gaddafi.

Damien Fowkes has been arrested after taking Colin Hatch hostage and strangling his fellow inmate at the maximum security Full Sutton prison near York on Tuesday night. Hatch was a serial paedophile who sexually molested a 7 year old boy, Sean Williams, before strangling him and dumping the body in a bin. Hatch murdered Sean Williams while on parole for a previous child sex attack and had a string of convictions for assaulting young boys.

Hatch  should never have been released from jail in the first place. Guido knows that every time he calls for the return of the death penalty Guardianistas start shrieking. It remains an unshakable belief that for some crimes society wants more than just protection from the perpetrator, the majority will not accept the rehabilitation of the perpetrator even if that were possible, society wants retribution. Hatch should have been executed after a judicial process. Instead many, probably the majority of right thinking people – and the metropolitan political class is very out of touch on this – will wish Damien Fowkes well.

On Facebook thousands of people are paying tribute to Damien Fowkes, some are describing him in heroic terms. Sean Williams’ father John and sister Sarah were said to be “ecstatic” over the killing. His father stated: “Justice had finally been done”. It should have been done by due process of the law.

Front runners Fine Gael are running on a “Smaller, Better Government“ platform; reducing the number of overpaid politicians, a referendum on abolishing the second chamber and reform of healthcare provision based on the Dutch model where money follows the patient. They are promising to focus on the deficit by prioritising cutting waste and that income tax will not be increased. Sounds good, but Guido just doesn’t believe ’em, particularly if they end up in coalition with Labour.

Discredited Fianna Fáil are running on “substance” with no new spending commitments, but they’re widely and rightly seen as a bunch of crooks and shysters. The Irish Labour Party are worse than the crooks and shysters – they’re incompetent socialists. Sinn Féin are the only party that are in any way EU-sceptic and opposed the bail-out of bond-holders, at the end of the day they’re just too left-wing to stomach. Unless Fine Gael win outright, they will probably end up in coalition with Labour. Theoretically Fianna Fáil could support a Fine Gael centre-right government, and that might be for the best…

The links between the Gaddafi family, Blair, Mandelson and Brown’s government are well documented. Does Ed Milband’s “new generation” also have links to the Libyan dictatorship? Has Ed Miliband himself got personal links to the “mad dog of the Middle East”?

Professor Held is ghost-writing a big-ideas book for his Dartmouth Park neighbour Ed Miliband, he is also co-director of the London School of Economics’ Centre for the Study of Global Governance. The Centre took £300,000 off Saif Gaddafi.

Held also oversaw Saif’s dodgy doctorate which is under great pressure to be revoked. Professor Held chairs the “Special Ralph Miliband Lecture” series and in November 2009 invited Ed to give one in front of his mother. Watch how Ed heaped praise on Held for all the work he has done for his family:

Six months later Held chaired another “Special Ralph Miliband” event, only this time with a slightly higher profile guest. The details have mysteriously been pulled from the LSE website, but Guido can confirm Held welcomed Saif as a “Representative of the Miliband program” with the sort of sycophantic introduction that only a large sum of money can buy:

When you hear him trying to distance himself from it all in the Guardian, remember he has enjoyed the regimes hospitality.

Ed Miliband’s ideological lodestar is a professor funded by Gaddafi’s bloody money who says he is friends with Saif. Great judgement…