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?

In this video wee Dougie Alexander shows why he won’t be a leadership contender after the election. His less than inspiring back-room boy style briefing from Labour HQ is somewhat reminiscent of Eric Pickles’s efforts, yet it has all the joy and excitement of a game of bowls. Labour are spinning all they want that “people win elections – not posters” but it’s a poor effort at hiding the fact the party have no money. Did the Labour Party claim they didn’t need posters in 1997 when the money was rolling in?

What Labour are doing well at though is the virtual-phone-banking. It’s a move right out of the Obama play-book and with the full weight of the Unite machine organising behind them, it seems that Labour are outdoing their Tory counterparts in making sure their wavering core wake up. People in marginals are already complaining of the near constant bombardment. Still many weeks to go and it will only get worse.

UPDATE : You must read this fantastic piece by Dizzy about Wee Dougie: Labour Unveils its Radical New Strategy.

Access to clean water is one of the most pressing problems the developing world faces at the best of times. In the video above you can see an amazing British solution for disaster zones.  At over £100 a bottle to produce 6,000 litres it is expensive now.  If DfID only spent a small bit of their multi-billion budget on this in readiness for the next disaster, instead of on filming videos of Dougie Alexander watched by a dozen people,* it would save countless lives.  It would also drastically reduce the unit cost with large scale production runs.

This amazing LifeSaver bottle can literally put clean pure water in the hands of disaster victims as fast as a cargo-plane can fly to the disaster zone.  The bottle was developed by one British entrepreneur, Michael Pritchard, using nano-technology and without a single penny of state subsidy.  Capitalism works…

*Why is DfID wasting money producing videos of Dougie Alexander in Bangladesh wishing “Happy Ramadan“ (at the time of publishing this) to all of 12 viewers?

Hat-tip : Brian Micklethwait

The low circulation New Statesman continues to fascinate Guido, a co-conspirator has sent in an example of a lavish bit of sycophancy which really deserves a bigger audience.

You may remember that James Macintyre was not so long ago bitterly disappointed at failing to become Ed Miliband’s SpAd after Derek Draper advised Ed against hiring him.  This week Macintyre was embedded on a junket to Bangladesh and India with Ed Miliband and Dougie Alexander to see poverty first-hand and get a few photo-ops with the ministers.  Looks like Macintyre is re-applying for the SpAd job with the man he describes optimistically as “a leader-in-waiting”:

It is amazing to think that if the conventional wisdom is right, and Labour loses, these talented ministers, with so much to offer, will suddenly be out of a job. I can’t remember who their Tory opposite numbers are, but it is fair to say that certain parties I have spoken to, from NGO workers to diplomats to foreign politicians, are keeping their fingers crossed that the consensus will be proved wrong.

Can you hear that sucking up sound?  You would think that the ‘political correspondent’ of a magazine with pretensions to being a serious journal would know his subject. It falls to Guido, again, to help out the Statesman’s political team: Andrew Mitchell and Greg Clark are their opposite numbers…

It is noticeable that old hands like Geof Hoon and Jack Straw have been the ones pushed in front of the cameras by Downing Street to defend the government during this whirlpool of incompetence. Ed Balls and Douglas Alexander have kept out of sight whispering in Gordon’s ear. So it is a bit of a disappointment that Wee Dougie won’t be on Question Time this week after all.

Iain Dale is asking readers if they can work out why. Was it…?

A) He was scared of appearing with Ken Clarke
B) He couldn’t think how to defend Sister Wendy
C) He didn’t want to account for his role in the bottled election decision
D) He was scared of defending his role in the David Abrahams planning application

or E) All four

Another Brown bottler.

Quick history of recent train crashes:

• Southall – Occurred 19 September 1997; DPM John Prescott (with
• responsibility for transport) visited the scene on the same day.
• Ladbroke Grove – Occurred 5 October 1999; DPM John Prescott
• (with responsibility for transport) visited the scene on the same day.
• Hatfield – Occurred 17 October 2000; Transport Minister, Lord
• Macdonald of Tradeston, visited the scene the next day.
• Selby – Occurred 28 February 2001; DPM John Prescott (with
• responsibility for transport) visited the scene on the same day.
• Health Minister Yvette Cooper visited some of the injured at
• Pontefract General Infirmary.
• Potters Bar – Occurred 10 May 2002; Transport Secretary Stephen
• Byers visited the scene the next day.
• Ufton Nervet – Occurred 6 November 2004; Transport Secretary,
• Alistair Darling visited the scene two days later.

Grayriggs – no ministerial visit. Branson was there within 12 hours despite being on a family holiday in Switzerland. Even the RMT’s General Secretary, Bob Crow visited the scene that night.

On Friday the 23rd of February Douglas Alexander was in Wales for the Welsh Labour Party conference. Returning to a Scottish constituency could have taken him through Cumbria. Labour is having some problems with their campaign in Scotland. Brownite loyalist Alexander is “steering strategy”. He is probably too busy fending off the SNP’s coming electoral kicking on Brown’s home territory to be bothered with his ministerial responsibilities.

UPDATE : Scottish Labour took a £6,000 donation from Network Rail Limited three months ago.

UPDATE II : Scottish Labour had a total of £11,000 from Network Rail Limited last year.