What might have been… Guido was told that somewhere on a hard-drive in CCHQ is a David Davis template for Conservatives.Com. Given how pisspoor Basher’s (now offline) campaign website was, Guido would love to see a copy of it. Email it here.

The source insisted that impartial CCHQ was ready to run with it in the event that Davis triumphed. He conceded that perhaps a teensy weensy little bit more time had however been spent on development of the ‘Cameron’s Conservatives’ website…

New Labour Unplugged have spotted a little lordly looting of the public coffers going on. Peers who say their main residence is outside London can claim an overnight allowance of ₤154.50 for staying in the capital on parliamentary business. A clutch of New Labour peers have paid their mortgages on so-called second homes at the expense of taxpayers.

Baroness Dean of Thornton-le-Fylde (the former trade union leader Brenda Dean) received ₤57,944 in overnight subsistence payments between 2001 -05 after claiming her main home was a waterfront pad in Falmouth while the £900,000 Islington town house she shares with her husband, former CBI press chief, Keith McDowall, was merely their second home.

Lord (David) Lipsey (otherwise known as Lipservice) for his unstinting loyalty to the New Labour cause is another whose ‘main home’ turns out to be a ₤250,000 farmhouse retreat in the backwaters of rural Wales while his £750,000 mock Queen Anne villa in Tooting (the area by which he is known, i.e. Lord Lipsey of Tooting Bec) is again just a ‘second home.’ The difference? ₤88,648 in allowances.

Despite a hectic London schedule Lord (Derry) Irvine of Lairg’s £1 million Westminster flat in fashionable Smith Square ( just yards from the House of Lords) also turns out not to be his ‘main’ home. At a cost of ₤39,123 to taxpayers this accolade goes to a six-bedroom house in the Scottish highlands that that he uses at Christmas and in the summer.

Tony’s first leader of the House of Lords after the 1997 General Election victory, Lord (Ivor) Richard of Ammanford is another who seems to spend more time at his second home than at his main residence. The latter is a remote bungalow on Dartmoor inherited by his wife. The second home, by contrast, is a four-story Georgian terraced house in Pratt Walk Kennington, convenient not just for the house of Lords but for Ivor’s legal practice and the couple’s jolly social lives. The difference in addresses is worth £65,138.

http://www.labour.org.uk

Welcome to the Labour Party website. The normal site is temporarily unavailable following an explosion at Buncefield oil depot in Hemel Hempstead on Sunday 11 December.

Part of the offices of our hosting company were extensively damaged, resulting in the loss of our site.

These guys run the country the same way they run their website. Err, guys you did remember to back it up? You wouldn’t be that stupid would you?

UPDATE:

The Guardian’s Oliver King credits this blog as the origin of the story, a refreshing change in behaviour from that quarter. Wonder what brought it on?

As I supped my sixth cosmopolitan at the Policy Exchange christmas party at Axis last night, Cameron ascended to the podium and a light shone out across the room, it illuminated dozens of very uncomfortable, tie-less men in suits. This was just not real, people admitted to Guido they were unsure about the dress code. Looking around, Matthew Parris smiled upon a coterie of young male admirers, Andrew Neil smiled upon a bevy of young females, a typical Tory wonk party was in flow. The room was representative; investment bankers, lawyers, spin merchants and political hacks constituted the majority. Maude was tieless, Alan Duncan was spritely, Osborne was black-tied and Michael Spencer was still un-knighted.

Words were spoken, of how Boles knew Cameron of old, how Cameron owed Boles and what he wanted for the Tories “..black, white, gay or straight…”, only the vegetable and mineral were excluded.

At this, the vortex of Tory modernisers, it nevertheless felt just the same, apart from uncomfortable men going tie-less (in grey suits) nothing has changed yet. Not because of Cameron or Boles, but because they were Tories, no “proper party pimping“ can change that. This is the problem for the new Tory mission, all Labour has to do to scare the voters away is point a video camera at any Tory gathering, let the camera linger long and slowly on the attendees. They are just not normal. Until you look like real people you cannot expect to win the people over. [Some of the girls looked unrealistically good for a Monday night mind you, so there are definitely some pluses to the Tory unreality].

Guido spotted Sheridan Westlake at the party last night. “Nick, Nick” I called to him and bemused he turned around, Guido proffered him his business card. He looked visibly shaken and a tiny sliver of shame for Guido’s tormenting of him came over him.

Guido got too drunk to remember what he actually does at CCHQ, I do recall him saying Recess Monkey was an idiot. Anyway, it’s now Guido’s New Year’s resolution not to torment him anymore.

Propeller-Head Wonk Watch: As the post-leadership battle dust settles, the battle for the ear of the new regime begins. Guido wrote previously about the alignment of the think-tanks during the election hustings, now the importance of having influence with Cameron has shot up the think-tank agenda because New Labour seems so intellectually tired and the novelty of the Notting Hill set seems as attractive to wonks as much as voters. So who in wonk-land looks to be favoured by the new regime?

The old generation right-of-centre think-tanks frankly missed the whole Cameron phenomena. They also backed, in the main, the man they knew – Davis. So Cameron owes no debts to them. The big winner is Nicholas Boles, the fairy godmother of the modernisers, his Policy Exchange think-tank was the platform for modernising ideas, it even hosted C-Change, the virtual pressure group that first told the Tories it was time to adapt or die. It was also home to Francis Maude before he was brought in by Michael Howard to begin the re-making of the party. Labour researchers will be poring over the output of Policy Exchange for an idea as to what Cameron’s Conservatives will be about policy wise.

Boles’ wonk-shop has had no influence on the government, but it has had a lot of influence on the Conservatives. Policy Exchange’s themes of localism and quality of life are now key policy objectives, but more importantly the fresh look and feel of the Tories owes much to their modernising attitude.

Boles himself is an ex-flat mate of Michael Gove, he was a councillor on Westminster council along with Ed Vaizey so he is as close to the Cameron crowd as you can get. If 211 voters more in Brighton Hove had voted for him he could now be on the Tory front-bench. Boles may yet be parachuted in to parliament, although he could equally be as much use outside as a domestic policy outrider.

On international affairs the policy outrider is Alex Singleton’s Globalisation Institute. Which has taken Guido’s advice and swapped the ‘z’ for an ‘s’ in its name since its launch. As a charity it kept out of the fray during the Tory hustings, but the many stirring pictures of Cameron on the website’s blog told you clearly where its heart lay. The evidence suggests Cameron’s speechwriter (Steve Hilton) was familiar with the Institute’s output as this blog article hints. CCHQ sources confirm that Alex Singleton has recently been seen in the building.

Singleton is the former research director of the Adam Smith Institute who kicked off the flat-tax debate by commissioning a report on it in 2004. When he left to set-up the his own shop, the Archbishop of Canterbury weighed in on the first report from the man the UN’s secretary-general’s chief-of-staff calls “the high priest of globalisation”. The whizz-kid wonk is a former geek technology writer and has no time for girlfriends – or perhaps that’s just a phase. (What is it about right-wing wonks?)

Guido bets the forthcoming, but as yet unannounced, Tory Commission on Globalisation and Global Poverty will take up the theme of enterprise-based development promoted by the Globalisation Institute.

All the think-tanks of the right will no doubt be switching priorities to the modernising agenda, but these two outriders have a headstart.

Its fair to say that CCHQ is now ecstatically in the grip of the Opus Dave cult, the girls and boys are wandering around with beatific smiles. Ahead in the polls? Its thirteen years since that happened, some of them had not even started on their synthetic phonics when that was last the case.

Spotted in the hands and handbags of the young cultists is Virgina Postrel’s book “The Substance of Style: How the Rise of Aesthetic Value Is Remaking Commerce, Culture, and Consciousness“ – which justifies style over substance. A vice that Davis supporters accused Cameron of, and of which Cameroonies are now making a virtue

Expect it to be in a few Christmas stockings of confused Tories eager to modernise their thinking.

Guido’s inbox is overflowing with email from Labour attacking Cameron. Ian McCartney makes the same mistake that the Tories did when confronted by Blair. The Tory propagnda of the mid-90s tried to demon-eyes him as a front for the usual Labour lefties – it failed. Labour’s feeble line is “New gloss, same old Tories”. Exactly echoing the same mistake that the Tories made in response to the Blair phenomenon. Cameron is not a re-tread, its the real deal, that kind of propaganda just won’t wash with the public. Better re-calibrate the slogans and propaganda fast.

Jo.Brand@reply-new.labour.org.uk emails Guido to ask “What’s Dave passionate about?” – its not cake Jo. She complains that Cameron is an old Etonian, yet Jo Brand is herself a product of a selective school education – something the socialist comedian doesn’t shout about…

Gordon Brown’s reaction to the latest polling results is unprintable. They say a picture is worth a thousand (swear) words.

All in all it looks like Labour is frit, the next few years are going to be great fun for all – except Gordon…

A group of CCHQ staff working the weekend shift yesterday went off to buy lunch in Westminster. All looking very Cameron style wearing trendy shirts sans ties etc. As they go to enter CCHQ Stephen Twigg says “you look like Labour students” and tags on the end of the group only to be stopped by the security staff.

The wonk-chief of the Foreign Policy Centre was supposed to be speaking at a Labour Students event around the corner.