Sometimes Guido almost feels sorry for Ed. Almost. Despite all his hard work pretending not to be a pinko, when Ken Livingstone says that for “the first time since John Smith died… there’s a Labour leader who actually likes me”, you’re in trouble. In a what looks set to be a fairly rambling interview with Amber Elliott from Total Politics, Red Ken does his leader no favours in trying to compare Boris to Hitler. We all know how well his last Nazi analogy went…

One thing that did make Guido laugh though was the reference that the perpetual former Mayor made about Gordon being mental:

“Brown was manoeuvred into a position where we were seen together, and he looked reasonably comfortable with that. I think they had him on something for those occasions.”

In jest perhaps, but too near to the truth to be that funny…

Gordon crashed his wife’s appearance at the Edinburgh Festival in order to bemoan those pesky journalists who pointed out the former Prime Mentalist’s rather damaging flaws and held him to account:

“In Britain, what the press do, if they really want to get at someone, is they challenge their motives and their integrity. They try to suggest that they’re not the person that they say they are. The way the press works in this country is they try to doubt the motives of people all the time. They try to suggest that you’ve got a malign purpose in what you’re doing. And they try to take pieces of people’s characters and destroy those pieces so they can make their political point as a result of that. You can’t say it is not hurtful.”

He hated them so much he invited them into his home, to family occasions and creeped around them for fifteen years on his way to the top.  

And of course he never used the press to destroy anyone in his way…

As one of their most ardent cheerleaders in government and close personal friend of Gordon Brown, Piers Morgan might have thought he would be safe with his old red chums.

Tory Therese Coffey landed the CNN star in a whole host of trouble on Newsnight last night:

“I just hope that the police take the evidence and go with it and if Mr Morgan wants to come back to the UK and help them with their inquiries, and I don’t mean being arrested in any way, I’m sure he can add more light… I think it would help everybody, including himself and this investigation, if he was able to say more about why he wrote what he did in 2006.”

And now with this morning’s intervention from Labour’s Deputy Leader Harriet Harman Morgan’s denials are looking even weaker:

“[Morgan] said he heard a heartbreaking phone message which clearly gives rise to the assumption that he’d heard a tape recorded message. It’s not good enough fro him to say I’ve always complied with the law and the press complaints commission. He’s got to answer now we’ve got this allegation from Heather Mills.”

Piers is running out of friends fast…

Yesterday in his slightly bonkers and self serving speech in parliament Gordon Brown complained among other things that the Sun compared him to Dr Evil. Guido thinks it was completely legitimate to make that comparison. Gordon was trying to convince the British public that he had masterminded a plan to “save the world”, and in his deluded mind he possibly believed it. Never mind that Obama had his own plan, that the rest of the world’s large economies were going to do their own thing and that Sarkozy was claiming credit for his plan to save Europe. It was a bonkers obsession with Brown to fantasise about authorship of a global concerted recovery plan of his design. The rest of the world’s leaders just posed smiling for the G20 pictures and couldn’t wait to fly home. His messianic global plans are a big part of the reason why no one besides Bono wanted Gordon to head up the IMF.

The popular profitable press knows it has to entertain readers, Guido never forgets he is in the infotainment business. Is it really a big deal to be lampooned as like a movie baddie? Clearly Brown’s psychological flaws include taking himself far too seriously. Knowing he read this blog and it added to his torment gives Guido immense satisfaction…

A week or two after the G20 meeting Brown’s bunker friends Damian McBride and Charlie Whelan were exposed as being in on a plot to smear political opponents with what they knew to be lies. That was pretty evil…

Murdoch’s News International was on the ropes, blows coming from left and right, his power waning. What better time for Brown, still bitter about the day of his conference speech switch of support by The Sun to the Tories, to exact his revenge. But in true Jonah Brown style, he couldn’t even hit the back of the net of an open goal.

Pretending to merely “comment” on two-bit allegations he himself fed to the Guardian, he ignored the fact that the PCC rules allowed the Sunday Times to use subterfuge in the public interest, and he flew a kite with the unsubstantiated medical records claim. Something he had to row back from in yesterday’s interview.

You can bet rivals at the Guardian, The Telegraph and the BBC didn’t expect the Sun’s original source, another father of a child with cystic fibrosis, to be willing to sign an affidavit swearing he had never seen the medical records. Only Gordon could fail so spectacularly to score an open goal and he has managed to derail the Guardian’s campaign – because of him News International have a hook to fight back on and they are with today’s Sun front page. If Gordon wanted he could have gone to the PCC and invoked  6 (v) of the PCC code, which would have killed the story, or complained afterwards. If Rebekah Brooks made him cry it seems odd that he subsequently went to her wedding, attended her birthday party and got Sarah to host a “girls” sleep-over at Chequers with Rebekah Brooks and Wendi Murdoch. A big round of applause for Jonah from Wapping.

*Source for Gordon’s “I will destroy you” threat to Murdoch is the founding chairman of Sky and former editor of The Sunday Times, Andrew Neil.

This morning’s front-pages worked along a theme “Brown’s shock that his family medical records were hacked”. Kids should not be fair game for the pack, but is there any evidence that this is a hack rather than a traditional, if distasteful, leak? It’s noticeable that since this crisis broke, News International have been ominously silent on the specifics of the allegations put to them, until this one that they have denied. 

Here’s what Gordon said:

“You’re in public life. And this story appears. You don’t know how it’s appeared. I’ve not questioned how it’s appeared. I’ve not made any allegations about how it’s appeared. I’ve not made any claims about [how it appeared]. But the fact is it did appear. And it did appear in the Sun newspaper.” 

No allegation of illegality, but too late, the story is out. The timing of yesterday’s intervention couldn’t have worked better to keep the story alive here , and across the Atlantic. And it’s not just Guido that smells a the whiff of revenge…

Rumours are swirling that Brown is about to break cover at some point and implicate other newspapers in this scandal. Crick has put his cards on the table:

I hear that Gordon Brown going to make statement re activities of Sunday Times this afternoon.—
Michael Crick (@BBCMichaelCrick) July 11, 2011

Many suspect the glee with which Labour have taken to this fight has within it an element of Brownite revenge for the vicious kicking News International gave the Prime Mentalist on his way out the door and a kick in the shin to Blair who was closely allied to Murdoch. He may have sworn revenge, and it’s no surprise his close ally Tom Watson has been at the heart of this campaign, but can Brown really turn around now, with any shred of credibility, and pretend he wasn’t as enamored with the Sun King as his predecessor and successor? He certainly went out of his way to creep up to the empire.

Not only was Gordon creeping around James Murdoch whenever he got the chance (he was his guest at Chequers the weekend that the 2007 election was cancelled), but according to the “Ed” book, Rebekah Wade came up with one of his Miliband-destroying “no time for a novice” sound bites. One of the key ways he brown-nosed Murdoch and News International was by carefully deploying his more socially adept wife to do his bidding. Not content with organising dinners and Chequers “slumber parties“ with Elizabeth and Wendi Murdoch, Sarah Brown actually organised Rebekah Brook’s fortieth birthday.

Yes you read that right.

Guido has wondered in the past what exactly Alison McGovern does as Gordon Brown’s PPS. He never turns up or speaks, so why the dubious honour? Given McGovern is pregnant, speculation is mounting as to who will fill in for her when she goes on maternity leave.

If she’s not replaced then questions will arise about her onerous and demanding role.

Backbenchers should form an orderly queue to make their pitch for the job.

Ultra-Brownite loyalist Kirsty McNeill has finally jumped ship from the tax-saving operation that is The Office of Gordon and Sarah Brown. The author of those tractor-stat speeches and stage manager of the cling to power, was brought in during those dark autumn days of 2009 when the Prime Mentalist was cracking under the pressure. She apparently told friends that she wanted to stay on until Gordon’s reputation has been restored after the election defeat. It seems she has got bored of waiting for hell to freeze over though…

Labour sources suggest that the OGSB has been very quiet in recently. With Brown’s PPS pregnant, and now his gatekeeper on the run, perhaps now would be an ideal time for the man himself to move on…

Guido speculated the other day about the role Douglas Alexander played in the onslaught that Ed’s leadership faced last week, and apparently the “Ed” book sheds some more light about his fraught relationship with his leader. Andy Grice reports:

Ed told his fellow Brownite Douglas Alexander that toppling Mr Brown “would be like killing our father”. The authors remark: “This vivid phrase again signifies Ed’s loyalty to his political ‘father’, Brown, not his real-life brother, David.” 

Although he was one of Ed’s oldest political friends, Mr Alexander decided to run David’s leadership election campaign. This was a blow to Ed. The two of them had gone on holiday together and their partners – Justine and Mr Alexander’s wife, Jackie – had also become close. “Ed’s desire to be leader meant his personal relationships were taking a battering,” says the book.

Ed told friends Mr Alexander was annoyed that a man younger than him was standing and believed a brother should not challenge an elder sibling. Mr Alexander was said to believe that Ed’s challenge had its roots in a long-established sibling rivalry and that the Labour leadership should not be “sacrificed” on the altar of it.

Is Wee Dougie avenging the spilt blood?