Breaking: Understand the consultation into Pilgrims – taxpayer funded trade union officials – will start next week.—
Harry Cole (@MrHarryCole) July 03, 2012

Alistair Darling boasted about LIBOR falling in December 2008…

“The measures that I announced in October have stabilised the banking system, and inter-bank lending rates have fallen. The three-month LIBOR rate halved to just over 3 per cent. this week.”

Downing Street are drawing attention to this email in Barclay’s evidence to tomorrow’s Treasury Select Committee:

Click to Enlarge

“Mr Tucker stated the levels of calls he was receiving from Whitehall were ‘senior’ and that while he was certain we did not need advice, that it did not always need to be the case that we appeared as high as we have recently.”

As Guido said this morning, you have to distinguish between the nickle and dime LIBOR fixing scandal of traders trying to massage their end of day mark-to-market and the Treasury / FSA / Bank of England policy of fixing LIBOR. Tomorrow Bob Diamond is likely to point out that manipulation of LIBOR rates was in the national interest and sanctioned by Downing Street and the regulators.

Gordon Brown’s Downing Street economic adviser Shriti Vadera was driving the policy…

The Diamond backlash wasn’t expected until tomorrow’s Treasury Select Committee, but the first blows have been struck from an unlikely source: his daughter. Nell Diamond, a twentysomething Deutsche Bank employee, has hit back at the politicians laying into her dad. In a swiftly deleted tweet, Nell told George Osborne and Ed Miliband to “HMD“, or “hold my dick“:

Bob Diamond's daughter. Those not familiar can look up acronym RT @nelliediamond: George Osborne and Ed Miliband you can go ahead and #HMD—
David Rose (@DRoseTimes) July 03, 2012

The photos of Nell and Bob are still up…

UPDATE: Neo-Guido was at the same Kanye gig pictured above and returns from lunch to report Daddy Diamond and Nell are displaying the “Diamonds are Forever” sign.

Labour prude Rachel Reeves has suffered a new blow in her killjoy campaign to shut down lap dancing clubs in Leeds city centre. The Shadow Chief Secretary to the Treasury has called for premises that offer adult entertainment services to be refused licenses and be forced to move out to “less conspicuous” areas.

Guido is pleased to report that all seven lap dancing clubs in Leeds have retained their licenses as, hilariously, the online e-petition for Reeves’ campaign has mustered only three signatures as we go to pixel. The people have spoken…

Tom Watson finally escapes from his News International bubble:

“Banking is bigger than Murdoch“.

Alex Salmond’s favourite columnist Joan MacAlpine MSP was off on one this morning about new union poster boy Alistair Darling. In a particularly unhinged rant, MacAlpine lambasted the former Chancellor for “being asleep at the wheel while the bankers screwed the rest of us”. That’s all very well, but poor old Joan then got slightly ahead of herself:

“Quite why he thinks he has the right to come to Scotland and lecture us about how to run our affairs is breathtaking in its arrogance.”

Perhaps because the fact that Darling is, er, Scottish…

It appears that Progress has bowed to pressure from the unions and admitted defeat in the party’s damaging civil war. The Blairite faction this morning acknowledged the grievances of the GMB and announced a raft of reforms in response to their criticism. Labour’s enemies-of-the-people will now publish unprecedented information on their sponsorship and donations. Presumably that declaration will be “it’s all from Lord Sainsbury”.

“With everyone of your predictions it goes on getting worse, I’m sorry sir you don’t have the presence, the credibility or the standing for the international markets to believe you can provide a solution. And Mr Barroso here, who stood up at the G20 and said “we don’t need any lessons on democracy”. Says the unelected president of the European Commission… You’ve made yourselves an international laughing stock. You don’t have any credibility.”

Yesterday it was the Tories advising their top donors on how to avoid tax through a controversial “legacy” scheme. The story had considerable traction and unsurprisingly provoked considerable outrage among Labour MPs:

How many estates have reduced Inheritance Tax by leaving money to Conservative Party Foundation? Does PM regard it as tax avoidance scheme?—
Steve McCabe (@steve_mccabe) July 02, 2012

Guido can now reveal that the Labour Party offers an almost identical scheme to help its supporters dodge inheritance tax as well. Labour’s “Leave a Legacy” programme offers advice on three different methods of leaving money to the party, even going as far as to suggest clever a legalistic wording of donors’ wills in order to minimise tax liability:

Labour have led the way on bashing tax dodgers, with everyone from the shadow cabinet to the backbenches queuing up to stick the boot in. Starting with trigger-happy tweeter Steve McCabe, Guido wonders what they have to say about their own party being directly involved in a tax avoidance scheme. They call that red-handed…