The Chairman of the Culture Media and Sport Select Committee John Wittingdale has added to the pressure on Morgan:

“Teresa Coffey said he should come back to this country to answer questions and I think that is absolutely right. He certainly should.”

When your denials just don’t cut it, what would you do to handle the crisis? Probably not use the same tactic Morgan has deployed:

So heart-warming that everyone in UK's missing me so much they want me to come home. #swoon—
Piers Morgan (@piersmorgan) August 04, 2011

Guido’s not sure Morgan will get the last laugh…

Remember our old friend Jane Pilgrim? The union staffer at St George’s Hospital in Tooting, who is paid a full time nurses salary not to nurse? She instead spends her days smearing Lansley. Well Guido hears that she was allowed to carry on as if nothing had happened, despite being busted running a private consultancy firm on the side, that used pictures of the hospital’s management, without their consent, as endorsements. Instead of being sacked, she was promoted by hospital managers to “management lead for trade unions.” Whatever that means. 

While Pilgrim’s actions triggered outrage, with the issue of taxpayer funded union officials reaching Prime Minister Questions, and the government signalling a review into the practice, the original sinner and inspiration for the whole campaign has thus far got off very lightly. However Guido hears the net might be closing in on our old friend.

Geoff Thorne was a hospital porter and Secretary of the St George’s Hospital Unison branch. Like Jane Pilgrim he’s militant and ganged up with her to threaten a nurses strike at St George’s – as if it wasn’t enough that she wasn’t doing any actual nursing. Geoff had a cameo role in the Pilgrim saga when the Mail on Sunday outed him as Pilgrim’s lover and it emerged that he colluded in the lies spread about “meeting” Andrew Lansley, despite the fact that he boycotted the event with Pilgrim.

Well this morning Geoff Thorne was fired. Guido understands that this was for the leaking of confidential information, but is awaiting the official line. Geoff is not the only recent exit from St George’s Hospital in recent weeks. Within a few weeks of Guido breaking the Pilgrim mess back in May, the management at St George’s were cleared out. Normally, these sort of changes would happen as part of a bigger series of moves and restructuring. Not in this case – hospital sources are adamant that St George’s alone was singled out for the cleansing.The Chief Executive “resigned” and cleared his desk within 24 hours – without a replacement, two years early. Within days the Trust Chairman announced the end of her term.  Even though she was eligible for another two years. She used to have Labour Party posters up in her office…

New management has been brought in, and are apparently on a bit of a rampage. Jane isn’t off the hook yet…

Given that he’s on very thin ice at the moment, with the CPS holding his career and freedom in their hands, is it not a little presumptuous for the ever brazen Chris Huhne to be announcing speaking gigs months in advance? Keen greens can book now for October’s Renewable UK 2011 with a keynote from the Secretary of State for Climate Change…

Whether or not that will still be Huhne by then remains to be seen…

Head over to DirectGov to make your voice heard…

UPDATE: Great, the site is down:

The could have done some stress testing…

As one of their most ardent cheerleaders in government and close personal friend of Gordon Brown, Piers Morgan might have thought he would be safe with his old red chums.

Tory Therese Coffey landed the CNN star in a whole host of trouble on Newsnight last night:

“I just hope that the police take the evidence and go with it and if Mr Morgan wants to come back to the UK and help them with their inquiries, and I don’t mean being arrested in any way, I’m sure he can add more light… I think it would help everybody, including himself and this investigation, if he was able to say more about why he wrote what he did in 2006.”

And now with this morning’s intervention from Labour’s Deputy Leader Harriet Harman Morgan’s denials are looking even weaker:

“[Morgan] said he heard a heartbreaking phone message which clearly gives rise to the assumption that he’d heard a tape recorded message. It’s not good enough fro him to say I’ve always complied with the law and the press complaints commission. He’s got to answer now we’ve got this allegation from Heather Mills.”

Piers is running out of friends fast…

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