Fickle lot the Tory membership, they voted 2 to 1 for Dave against Davis, but now give Basher Davis a net approval rating of 84%. Obviously he has been lucky with the headlines, Clarke’s demise had nothing to do with him and everything to do with policy failure at the Home Office. Hague is the next darling of the membership, despite keeping a low profile. Liam Fox at Defence has become a stealth shadow, almost undetectable by media imaging systems, yet is the third most popular shadow minister.

Guido detects that ConservativeHome.Com panel methodology has some bias, Letwin on 12% and Frankie Maude on 6% seems to suggest that the poll is showing evidence of wing-nuttery. Letwin & Maude are hate-figures for many Tory recidivists and the wing-nuts seem to have their opinions over represented in this poll. As handy and easy as online polling is, it does have a self-selecting methodological flaw, which needs a corrective filter. In this poll what is interesting is the trend rather than the absolute figures. Bearing in mind that the mass membership rejected Davis and Fox and went with the modernising candidate it seems suspect that they now allegedly reject Dave’s fellow modernisers. The low rating for Osborne seems right, Guido meets no-one with a high rating for him and he is out-gunned by Gordon, his job should be swopped with Hague, sooner rather than later. Over to you Tim.

Any idea what Joan Hammell and Mick Halloran, Special Advisers to the DPM do for Prezza?

Two SpAds seems excessive for a man with no proper role other than to provide amusement for the rest of us.

Suggestions in the comments.

Are Channel 4 News’ Tory A-list “exclusives” now always going to consist of copying bits off the ConservativeHome.Com website?

Guido believes that a Labour donor/lender has indicated to the Yard’s Sleazebusters that he is willing to cough if given the right assurances… Levy’s perp-walk is getting nearer every day.

Belated gossip which was new to Guido : Maude almost got the heave-ho in a row with Cameron a little while back and is “on borrowed time”. Which seems odd since Maude was a party moderniser when Cameron was still writing Michael Howard’s speeches.

Sorry about the brevity, you’ll have to go and webmong on Popbitch or read about another fascinating funny job advert on Recess Monkey.

Well Guido for one won’t be missing the new BBC daytime fitness programme The Body Politics starring Mark Oaten. It starts next Monday. Can’t wait…

Guido is back. Now checking emails and deleting libellous comments etcetera. Have been busy offline. This weekend Guido particularly enjoyed Cherie’s comedy turn about Tony’s cabinet being like an IKEA flat-pack – one dodgy screw and it falls apart. Not too bad.

Too little, Tony

TONY Blair and Gordon Brown are fiddling while Rome burns. Restoring the link between pensions and pay rises is right. But it will make only a minor improvement to a pensioner’s income. And to fund it, we will have to work two or even three years longer before we can retire. That’s seven years after teachers, police and NHS staff retire on their superb public sector pensions.

This is the crux of the problem — but Labour will not tackle it and start a war with the unions.

It’s a battle David Cameron must be ready for if he’s to become PM.

How would things be different if he had lived?

In 1994 Guido was sat at his desk in a dealing room when word of John Smith’s heart attack reached the old LIFFE futures exchange trading pits before the newswires. Guido immediately called Stuart Wheeler’s bookmaking firm who offered a Cabinet Reshuffle Bet which, although the Tories were in government, included John Smith as a way of betting on Labour miraculously getting into government. Guido bet against John Smith the maximum they would take. A minute later Guido called the bookies again and did the same again this time at worse odds. The bookie said “you know if John Smith becomes PM you stand to lose £2,000″. Guido said yes, but could he put some more money on. The bookie hesitantly said “okay” and took another bet. Minutes later the news of his death was on the newswires. Guido called all his Labour voting friends to commiserate. One burst into tears and was in no way mollified when Guido offered to buy her a drink out of his winnings.

With CCHQ closing down the CRD and Gavin Barwell off to work for Lord Ashcroft, news reaches Guido that Steve Hilton’s number two, Dan Ritterband, is leaving without a replacement lined up.

The ex-Saatchi man has been responsible for the creativity and slick presentation of Cameron’s leadership campaign and the visual makeover at CCHQ over the last 6 months. Known as a charmer (girls and boys apparently – a truly inclusive moderniser) “beautifully dressed in designer clothes and never been seen wearing a tie” says one admirer*. He came to CCHQ via Policy Exchange and Michael Howard’s office. He had wanted to leave immediately after the election, rumour has it that he might be off to the States where he wants to work on the Democrats’ next presidential campaign, but his French boyfriend may have other ideas.

There are gaps appearing in the management of CCHQ. If it carries on like this Steve Hilton may actually have to go into the Victoria Street office personally.
*Dan favours Paul Smith suits, Diesel jeans, Kurt Geiger shoes and Hugo Boss glasses according to Guido’s fashion correspondent. N.B. those pictures are really of Dan.

As if New Labour didn’t have enough problems in reality already, the police are charging Chris Langham, the star of the BBC4 political satire The Thick of It on 15 counts of making indecent images of children. The actor was first arrested in connection with a police investigation into internet crime in December and bailed after questioning. Guido realises, despite the headline, that he only plays a fictional New Labour minister.

Strangely enough Guido is aware of rumours concerning an actual Labour minister who was caught up in Operation Ore, the FBI initiated investigation into perverts who gave their credit card details to a website in order to download kiddie porn. It is common knowledge in senior Labour circles. He has not been publicly exposed – yet.

Ed Davey is off to America to learn from Team Dean how to do the internet and use it to raise funds. Howard Dean was the loser to Kerry, who was in turn the loser to Bush etc., so obviously he is the LibDem’s ideal model.

If they had not done all of the above to Guido during their leadership elections, Guido could now be leading the membership calls to get rid of Ming and get Clegg in charge to do the Blue-Yellow funky fusion and get rid of the reds come the general election.

Finally, when communicating with online supporters or would be supporters;

• Take their money.
• Use a more funky email system, with some pictures and HTML in the emails, not the teletype style yawnathon emails that you do currently. They were geeky back in 1986, they look totally crap nowadays.