With the New Statesman’s intern shame exposed over Christmas, former Staggers man Martin Bright asked if 2013 would see the end of unpaid internships. The answer, courtesy of lefty blogs Political Scrapbook and Left Foot Forward, is a resounding “No”.

There are just five days left to apply for “volunteer editorial assistant” roles at Scrapbook and LFF, where the successful candidate will be required to write stories, edit material and liaise with sources and contributors. In other words running the site. They might have the feeble excuse of not making any money but they are dicing with employment law, they aren’t even offering lunch let alone the minimum wage. Just because Scrapbook’s editor can’t be bothered to wake up before midday it doesn’t mean an unpaid slave intern should be doing his job for him.  At least they can bathe in the reflected glory of “closing News of the World”…

Campaigners Intern Aware tell Guido: “It’s hypocritical that these left-wing organisations aren’t living up to their rhetoric about social justice when it comes to interns. Just as wrong is the way that right-wingers at Reform and The Henry Jackson Society don’t think ‘aspiration’ extends to hard-working young people who can’t afford to work for free”.

The New Statesman, Left Foot Forward and Political Scrapbook. Three moralising, money-haemorrhaging left-wing vanity projects steeped in hypocrisy. Shame on them…