The humiliation of Malcolm Rifkind continues, Guido understands that he has not even got a double figure number of MPs nominations (though the Guardian’s count of three is a little harsh). So he seemingly has done what he needs to do to get in the papers – “trash the Tory brand”.

Why Rifkind thinks this will help him is hard to fathom, his whole campaign has been completely misjudged, a has-been slap-head who could not even hold on to his seat now hopes to lead the Tories to electoral victory – strewth. Cameron and Davis are careful to avoid rubbishing the past, but that may be because they are not yesterday’s men. Rifkind, a figure of the past, has perhaps to put some distance between him and his history, hence his “we were wrong” stance.

Alan Duncan had the sense to get out as soon as he realised he could not garner support on the backbenches. Rifkind needs to give it up and support Cameron or a possible Clarke bid in the hope of future preferment – or suffer abject humiliation.

5/11 is a new play commissioned to mark the 400th anniversary of the Gunpowder Plot. It has obvious contemporary relevance – it is set in 1605 with a war on terror going badly. A group of young religious fanatics is plotting to… well, you get the idea. Mrs Fawkes and I won’t be able to make it, and we were due to review it on press night. So here is your chance lucky readers – you must be willing and available to attend Chichester Festival Theatre this Thursday (18, August) and you will be expected to write a review of the play for the blog.

To win, simply email Guido a piece of juicy gossip or tittle-tattle about a parliamentarian by midday Wednesday. Best piece of gossip wins the tickets. Rules, one piece of gossip per entry, Guido’s decision is final. Competition not open to Hong Kong residents.

Tickets can be bought online, more information here. Thanks to Sarah Wallis @ CFT for the tickets.

Over at PoliticalBetting.Com there have been some snide suggestions in the comments section about the inability of the Tories to win elections being correlated to the baldness of their leaders. Undeniably Thatcher had long golden locks and a lock on the electorate, Major too had a full head of hair, enough to win a second term. Since then slap-head after slap-head has lead the Tories to defeat.

Basher Davis, 57, apparently has a good head of hair – or has he? It has, Guido thinks, a certain Woganesque inability to change…

Since clearly Tory electoral victory is correlated to the fullsomeness of their leader’s follicles, the country needs to know, who does Basher’s coiffure? Does it need a scissors or glue?

So Guido was idly scanning his hit-logs and noticed the usual blog readers coming from the servers at the Guardian, News International, the Beeb, parliament, the Tory party, various arms of the civil sevice, think-tanks, lobbyists, as well as assorted law firms and investment banks where lawyers, brokers and bankers idle away the August boredom at their screens. The Associated Newspapers server was he noticed pointing to Order-Order.Com more than once yesterday.

Thom Dyke (a lobbyist at spin-merchants Lawson Lucas Mendelsohn) emails today to nominate Ephraim Hardcastle, the Daily Mail’s gossip columnist for the Press Plagiarist of the Year Award. Well it could be a coincidence, but readers, does this piece in today’s Daily Mail -

“This week’s issue of the Spectator – edited by Tory MP Boris Johnson – has a letter from six of his Parliamentary colleagues deploring ‘our decadent society’. They say: ‘Conservatives can choose either to help or prop up the failed ideas of the liberal elite, or answer the people’s pleas for certainty, order and decency.’ Since certainty, order and decency are not emphasised at Mr Johnson’s Spectator, where the fornication of the editor and his pals is currently celebrated by a play entitled Who’s The Daddy?, we may wonder why the letter is published prominently. Perhaps refusing to print it might have drawn even more attention to the activities there.”

– bear a large resemblance to this blog yesterday? Guido is a great admirer of Ephraim’s style and great minds do think alike, so Ephraim is welcome to discuss this with me over a bottle of Margaux (at the expense of Associated Press of course). The Sunday Times’ Atticus is now scrupulous in crediting the blogs he uses for stories, perhaps if more journo’s followed his lead the award would not be needed…

Nominations close October 31, 2005 for the award, which will be presented at a Central London ceremony on Friday, November 4.

The Ken Clarke candidacy is a venerable tradition of the Conservative party stretching back to the fall of Major, he never wins because the right rallies round a single candidate to stop him – and they end up with someone like IDS for their trouble.

Ken is 65, this is his last chance to stand for the leadership. The word is that he is prepared to suppress his Europhilia for the chance. Its not much to surrender since the chances of Britain joining the stumbling Euro project are possibly less than the probability of the Italians exiting the Euro. It would at a stroke remove the black ball against him being leader of the Tories for many centrists.

He is popular, he has the common touch, he has common sense, he is clubbable, competent and generally the type of guy you wouldn’t mind meeting in a Jazz club. He has a following on the Tory benches, he is popular in the party and more importantly he is popular in the country. He is generally to the left of most Tory activists – but they may be prepared to forgive his TRG membership for the chance of power. His candidacy would wipe out David Cameron’s chances at a stroke, (ignore the Rifkind candidacy, everyone else is), if the right divided between Basher and the overestimated Doc Fox, it could be his big chance.

KC’s Sunshine Band is the press – he is popular even with traditional Tory enemies. But will the dominant Tory Eurosceptic wing give him a chance or simply veto him? If perhaps he promised to make a hardline Eurosceptic his shadow foreign minister, (somone like William Cash would be perfect), he would be clearly signalling his willingness to give up his Euro ambitions. Throw in a couple of Notting Hillbillies into the cabinet and you have the makings of a formidable electoral threat to Gordon Brown.

KC could be singing again;

I’m your boogie man that’s what I am
I’m here to do whatever I can
Be it early mornin’ late afternoon
Or at midnight it’s never too soon
To wanna please you to wanna please you
To wanna do it all all for you…

Brian Binley, Peter Bone, David Burrowes, Philip Davies, Robert Goodwill and Mark Harper (six new Tory MPs you have never heard of) have written to the Speccie to complain about decadence in modern Britain

“Some liberals remain in denial, unwilling to face the decadent consequences of years of their ideas being put into practice,” the letter says. It cites problems like “family breakdown, binge drinking, blah, blah blah”. The irony of complaining about this in the ‘Sextator’ amuses Guido.

It’s 1605 and the war on terror is going badly. A group of young religious militants has recruited an experienced fighter in the cause, Guy Fawkes, to strike at the heart of the English Government. But in a police state no-one can be trusted and their plot is going to be turned against the very people it was meant to save.

Commissioned to mark the four-hundredth anniversary of the Gunpowder Plot this incendiary thriller weaves together the lives of kings and terrorists, priests and spies in a production of epic proportions…

Alistair McGowan will be playing King James in a new play by Edward Kemp called 5/11 commissioned to mark the 400th anniversary of the Gunpowder Plot at the Chichester Festival Theatre (12 August – 8 September). Daniel Abelson will be playing me (not sure if he is handsome enough, but it is theatre, so you can imagine). You can get tickets and read more about the production here.

Stay tuned for more interesting quad-centennial developments…

Propeller-Head Wonk Watch: The former National Council for Civil Liberties is now simply called Liberty. Shami Chakrabarti is the Director of Liberty having joined in September 2001, and has spent the last four years campaigning against the increasingly repressive anti-terrorist measures since 9/11.

According to the website, the ex-Home Office barrister believes that human rights should be at the core of society’s value system. She campaigns for a ‘culture of respect for human rights’ and is often seen on the box putting the case in this increasingly repressive age.

She is assisted by being photogenic, cute even, and not coming over as paranoid (unlike Guido) about the government. Shami is the voice of liberal reason, in contrast to Hazel Blears say, who is the robotic voice of illiberal spin, the Big Mother for our age. Shami is a permanent feature of broadcast news as Britain becomes a shoot-on-suspicion, ID-card-carrying, trial-without-jury, internment-without-trial, house-arrest-by-fiat, ASBO and control-ordered type of place.

Liberty is reputedly laden with Hampstead liberals, but increasingly right-wing libertarians recognise the value of an organisation which was once monitored by MI5 as subversive (in the days when Patricia Hewitt was involved). Liberty is not really a twenty wonk strong think-tank, its more a human rights organisation. Something worth supporting whatever your party allegiance.

Guido has often mocked Prescott as a not too bright, grumpy northern old school socialist, who is way out of his depth and only used by Tony as a merkin to hide what a **** Blair is, but this lovely story melts my cynicism.

Two Jags had left the ministerial car for a stroll in the Whitehall sunshine – unlike the PM who closes off Westminster self importantly every Wednesday for PMQs rather than walking the couple of hundred yards. Not just that, he bumps into an Indian family doing a bit of tourism and offers them an impromptu tour of No. 10.

You couldn’t spin that, never mind that the Patel’s are Hindus from Harrow rather than Muslims from Manchester, but it was still handy that the Press Association got a picture of Asians going into No. 10. Certainly makes a change from Jihadi terrorist threat stories.

The PMOS told the lobby today that David Blunkett’s claim to be helping to take decisions in Tony Blair’s absence was fantasy. The disgraced ex-Home Secretary claimed at the weekend he was working with Prescott to cover “a whole range of issues while other good colleagues are taking a break”. Blunkett said he was taking responsibility for helping explain the government’s proposed new laws to tackle extremism. “I obviously have the experience and the knowledge and I help out in terms of having to take, with John Prescott, the necessary decisions in the next couple of weeks,” he fantasised.

The PMOS said that Blunkett was not among the Cabinet ministers consulted by Prescott over the weekend. “The deputy prime minister is in charge while the prime minister is on holiday” Prescott’s office said he always took over in Mr Blair’s absence and “the arrangements have been the same for the last seven summers… This weekend he spoke to four or five of them, some of whom were on holiday.” Blunkett was not among those the deputy prime minister talked to on the weekend. Prescott has had a few run ins with Blunkett so that’s no surprise.

Last week, Home Office minister Hazel Blears said she, not Blunkett, was in charge at the department while Charles Clarke is away on holiday. Her comments came after Blunkett appeared to suggest he was standing in for the Fat Controller. Blunkett back-tracked at the weekend: “Hazel Blears substitutes for the Home Secretary, she is his deputy and she is doing extremely well.”

Blunkett should concentrate on trying to sort out his own department’s mess rather than yearning for his old one. Maybe his amnesia is back and he forgets he is no longer Home Secretary…