Ed Miliband asked the audience to be the judge on how he is doing so far when he appeared on Boulton & Co this lunchtime. With classic sound-bites such as “I can’t make a promise no, because I’m not going to make … I’m not going to make a promise I can’t keep… I’m not, I’m not going to make promises now four and a half years beyond election…” it wasn’t a great pitch. Prezza-lite articulation aside, it seems Ed has dug himself into a hole.

Boulton pushed him on whether Labour would use their proposed extended bank levy to reverse Child Benefit:

“Yeah sure.  I, I mean I, we’ve, we’ve never said, look we’ve never said that we would use the bankers’ levy for that”

Oh really Ed… Are you sure?

Let’s rewind five months to The Politics Show on the 10th October last year:

“If we can get more for example from the banks in a higher bank levy, to protect ordinary families, like on Child Benefit… we should do so.”

The video evidence is here. Saying “we’ve never said” over and over again won’t make it true Ed.

The congregation of St Peters Church in Hammersmith are getting used to a new star amongst the flock. A slightly more-on-the-ball parishioner noticed some subtler changes too. Naturally the people of Japan were at the forefront of the vicar’s request for prayers, but there was some confusion to why the local Tory council was in his thoughts this week. The government too…

The vicar also discussed the importance of solving unemployment and even invited his flock to a big society-esque meeting about  finding  jobs this Wednesday at a local pub. Regulars definitely noticed a change in tone that can only be explained by the leather jacket-clad “trendy dad” Craig Oliver, who was seen chatting away with the vicar for so long at the end that he caused a queue to get out. Guido can only assume Oliver was thanking the vicar for the government’s new found backing from God.

Am told that the Labour Whips now trying to lean on Gordon Brown not to make his rumoured Chamber Budget Day speech.—
Greg Hands (@GregHands) March 14, 2011

You can imagine the fingers of blame pointing already…

Guido would like to savour this moment as he reckons it’s the closest we are going to get to an apology. Balls finally coughed it:

“Did we spend every pound wisely? Of course we didn’t”

As Paul Waugh noted, Balls was in quite a candid mood. He responded to a point with “You learn about being Chancellor…” De facto perhaps, but was there something Guido missed?

Despite a weekend of declaring he’s not going anywhere, critics are still circling around Hague again this morning. Imagine the hail of twitter-righteousness if Steve Bell had drawn this cartoon for the Mail or this blog. Why the double standards for Guardian scribbles?

High up the list of things that Hague might find it a bit tricky to live down was his rash declaration that Gadaffi was on his way to Venezuela soon after the uprising began in Libya.  Guido’s man in Vauxhall Cross explains the confusion. MI6 had briefed him that they had intercepted a mobile phone conversation that had one of Gaddafi’s close staff speaking Spanish and using “code words”. The spooks deduced that he was almost certainly preparing Gaddafi’s flight to see his old chum Hugo Chavez in Venezuela. Obviously.

Turns out the man was actually ordering a take-away meal of burritos and tacos from the Café Caracas in Tripoli. Apparently.

The LibDems were strangely silent about their former PPC Mike Dixon being sent down for barbaric and savage attack on his family pet. Could it be that they were somewhat embarassed that Dixon played a key role in overseeing candidates for many years as an executive of the Parliamentary Candidates’ Association?

A sandal wearing source whispers that dangerous Dixon had a long track record of approving weird choices of oddball candidates and blacklisting seemingly sane or impressive ones over petty personal grudges. No wonder he slipped through the net. Dixon claims one of his areas of interest is “police crime”, something he can spend the next four months thinking about…

The second Tory peer charged with fiddling his expenses is due to enter his plea this morning at the Old Bailey. Paul White, the one time leader of Essex County Council said the claims for overnight stays in London, despite written evidence that he had travelled back to Essex, were in “good faith”. Like his fellow Tory Lord Taylor, Hanningfield  is expected to plead not guilty, so we will have to see what twelve honest men say about that…

UPDATE: Hanningfield was a no show, no plea entered. Trial in May at Southwark. Oink oink…

Lone protestor’s placard outside LibDem conference…

“Go back to your constituencies and prepare for oblivion.”