Kim Howells, former MP and NUM official, tells The World This Weekend that the Labour Party must break the union link…

“I think this threatens the whole reputation of the Labour Party. The Labour Party has got be seen to be above special interest politics. It’s no good any more assuming that ‘Well, the British People at large are going to be broadly sympathetic to the Trades Union movement therefore it doesn’t really matter.’ It does matter. It’s got to be seen to be a party that represents everyone. As society changes more quickly now than it has ever changed. The ‘Old Order’ is rapidly dissolving… Oh it’ll be a gift to the, to the Tories and the Lib Dems and the rest who want to see Labour defeated obviously, and kept out of government. But remember there are a lot of people inside the Labour movement who hate being in government because it means making very difficult decisions. They’d rather be a Ginger group outside. They’d rather be calling for what we used to refer to as “impossibleism” because it sounded good and it fitted their rhetoric. It’s a nonsense of course. And if Labour’s going to win the another General election and win cleanly then it’s got to change its constitution and its way of selecting candidates.”

Today’s Observer first and second editions look very different:

A quick Google of Wayne Madsen, their source for a series of serious allegations made against the National Security Agency, would have told them he is a conspiracy theorist who believes Mossad were involved in 9/11 and that President Obama is gay. Here is the Observer story that was humiliatingly pulled late last night:

“At least six European Union countries in addition to Britain have been colluding with the US over the mass harvesting of personal communications data, according to a former contractor to America’s National Security Agency, who said the public should not be “kept in the dark”.

Wayne Madsen, a former US navy lieutenant who first worked for the NSA in 1985 and over the next 12 years held several sensitive positions within the agency, names Denmark, the Netherlands, France, Germany, Spain and Italy as having secret deals with the US.

Madsen said the countries had “formal second and third party status” under signal intelligence (sigint) agreements that compels them to hand over data, including mobile phone and internet information to the NSA if requested.”

You can read the full pulled story here. Guardian journalists are this morning frantically distancing their paper from the Observer, despite them sharing a website and a boss. Google is your friend…

A new strapline for Guido in the Sun. Read about how Boris bellowed at Guido about last week’s “bald spot” story. Ladies, Guido reports what it is like to run your fingers though his hair.

Elsewhere in today’s column:

• When Theresa May enforced the peace between Lawson and Saatchi
• Genetically Modified Clegg
• Hodge wastes taxpayers’ money trying to save taxpayers’ money
• Buzzwords, burgers and a barbecue for Tory MPs
• All your latest reshuffle rumours

Politics for the many, not the few, just 60p…