Over a year ago Harriet Harman, speaking at a Labour delegates reception, claimed that the Labour Party had gained 65,000 new party members. This morning a Labour press spokesman, while defending Ed Miliband’s leadership, again claimed 65,000 new party members.

If the party’s press spokesman is telling the truth that means in over a year since the start of Ed Miliband’s leadership the Labour Party has not made a net gain of any more members. No surprise really, Ed hardly inspires enthusiasm…

Guido’s blog reading co-conspirators are massive consumers of books, usually bought online courtesy of Amazon. According to the online retailer our reader’s favourite top purchases of 2011 were:

1. Let Them Eat Carbon: The Price of Failing Climate Change Policies
2. The Silent State: Secrets, Surveillance and the Myth of British Democracy
3. Zetter’s Political Companion
4. The Big Short: Inside the Doomsday Machine
5. The Big Red Book of New Labour Sleaze
6. The Triumph of the Political Class
7. Human Action: A Treatise on Economics
8. Back from the Brink: 1,000 Days at Number 11
9. Ed: The Milibands and the making of a Labour leader
10. Dirty politics, Dirty times
11. The Rise of Political Lying
12. A Walk-On Part: Diaries 1994-1999 (Mullin Diaires 3)

E-editions and books were combined. Pugnacious Mehdi Hasan really should be less chippy given how many of his books Guido helps shift…