Sir Thomas Legg will report on Tuesday the long awaited results of his audit of MPs expenses. Right about now Members are opening letters revealing whether their appeals against Legg’s stringent payback requests have failed or not. Someone who has read the report told the Standard that it is a “brutal … unexploded bomb”.  Not only will over three hundred of the troughing piggies be slammed on Tuesday, but Legg also goes after the officials who allowed the pocket lining to continue without raising eyebrows. Great news.

The decision to bring in Legg was a rushed one taken by Downing Street at the height of the expenses scandal and it has come back to bite Gordon. Not only was he himself ordered to pay back over twelve grand but his measure designed to restore faith in Parliament has come full circle and in the end will reopen the expenses scandal, reignite all that hate and anger, with less than one hundred days until the election.

Another great tactical move from the bunker.

It is apparently “Blue Monday”, according to shrinks today is the most depressing day of the year due to the combination  of factors. Apparently the weather, debt level (personal rather than national), time since Christmas, time since failing new year’s resolutions (Mrs Fawkes hasn’t noticed the disappearing whiskey bottles yet), low motivational levels and feeling of a need to take action. Each year lazy tabloid hacks get a cheap story out of the day, but it must be noted that “Blue Monday” is going to be particularly hard for one woman.

Helen Scott Lidgett is an old friend of Sarah Brown, they used to work together at Sarah’s PR company and then at Brunswick, she has now been bought into the bunker for what must be the toughest job in both politics and PR – giving Gordon an intensive pre-election makeover.  It’s going to take more than airbrushing to turn the Prime Mentalist into someone that can actually be allowed out to meet the general public.

Her predecessor, Nicola Burdett (Sion Simon’s other half), was last heard of recuperating from suspected Nokia-related injuries in Barbados. Guido hopes Helen has the patience of a saint and an ability to duck…

Gordon’s ongoing quest for a sprinkling of stardust from Obama has hit yet another obstacle.  Firstly he was forced live on Marr to admit that he hadn’t spoken directly to Obama about the Christmas Day bombing attempt and now it seems Simon Lewis, Brown’s error-strewn official spokesman has sparked a serious falling out and public admonishment from the White House.

“A White House source” used an interesting choice of words to describe “a mistake” by Lewis to suggest that a file on the knicker-bomber, Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, had been passed to the US sometime “in 2008“. However Lewis has just had to retract his words and stated there was no suggestion that this had ever happened. Alan Johnson has been forced to schedule an emergency statement at 15.30. Sky News’s Joey Jones said he took no pleasure in describing it as “an awful briefing“. Another serious blunder by Brown’s slapdash spokesman, the Lobby have completely lost respect for Brown’s mouthpiece. A lobby hack who would prefer to anonymous say “it was an utter fucking car-crash”.

By the by, the Telegraph broke the story this morning.  Edited by Simon’s brother, Will Lewis…

Guido is a bit put out that Kevin Maguire has got an invite to Sarah Brown’s Downing Tweet Christmas Party. Why does he get to go and not Westminster’s most influential tweeter? Guido was looking forward to mingling with the cream of the Twitterati on the Number 10 mulled wine, so he called his old friend Konrad Caulkett, Sarah Brown’s SpAd, to chase up his invitation.

Guido Fawkes : I see Sarah’s having a Tweet-Up tomorrow and Kevin Maguire is there so obviously media are invited.  Could you sort out an invitation for me?
Konrad Caulkett : Sorry, who is it?
GF : Guido Fawkes
KC : I don’t think so…
GF : Why not?
KC : You know why.
GF : No I don’t, why [duhhhh  phone goes dead]

Co-conspirators will remember* that Konrad got his former employers, the Smith Institute, into a bit of bother for organising partisan events at the taxpayers’ expense in Downing Street.  Is it wise of him to go here again?

*Comrade Konrad, the Sith Apprentice, Sarah Who?

Sad or ironic?

Andrew Sparrow is chasing a rumour that Shriti Vadera, a trusted loyalist Brownie is quitting.  HMS Gordon Brown will be like the Marie Celeste at this rate.  Although credible rumours abound that Alastair Campbell will be joining the ship for the election campaign.  No doubt bringing his moral compass with him…

Over at the News of the World, Fraser Nelson tells it like it is:

Rumours are swirling around Westminster. Our PM is cracking under the strain, it is said, and may quit on health grounds. …

First, the rumours are true. Brown is shouting, screaming, hurling objects around the room, behaving like a maniac. In other words, business as usual. This is how he operates — and has done since he cocooned himself in the Treasury 12 years ago.

It may seem bonkers to promise free healthcare to the Nepalese when so many British kids can’t read and write. But he’ll do so this month.  It seems crazy apologising for the way gay computer pioneer Alan Turing was treated in 1954 — when Gordo was three years old.   Our PM was 49 when he sold the nation’s gold reserves for $275 an ounce. It passed $1,000 last week. Where’s our apology for that? …

It’s amazing that he dares to speak about the economy at all. Because for him to keep on spending like this IS a form of madness.  … The national debt was £340 billion when Labour came to power. Next year, £970 billion. In four years’ time, £1,370 billion. We will NEVER be able to reduce this burden on our families to pre-Brown levels. A trillion-pound debt may be with us forever. The impact of this debt on ordinary households — higher tax bills, worse schools, worse healthcare — will just be incalculable.  It’s an act of vandalism — on the prospects for future generations.

All because a PM could not bring himself to cut spending now. This is the real insanity. Throwing mobile phones around the room is the least of it…  But it will do nothing to change his place in history . . . as a man whose economic madness brought a country to its knees.

The Mail on Sunday reports that three key Labour strategists have had enough of  Brown’s rages.  His former aide and speechwriter Spencer Livermore is too ‘scarred’ to return to the election fray after the Prime Mentalist reduced him to tears during an explosive tantrum, David Hill, who succeeded Alastair Campbell as Downing Street’s spinmeister and DJ Collins, a former speechwriter for Tony Blair, have all turned down pleas to come to the aid of Brown.

Brown has instead promoted former left-wing student Kirsty McNeill, his 29-year-old speechwriter, to be his adviser in charge of external affairs.  Lord Mandelson is said to be unhappy and a Downing Street insider* according to the Times despairs “Kirsty has suddenly become one of the most powerful people in Downing Street and it has ruffled a lot of feathers. She is one of the few people who still thinks Gordon is wonderful and tells him what he wants to hear. She has huge influence now.”   Clearly she is the bunker’s new Eva Braun…

*Wonder who that could be?

Even though she is being cynically used to humanise Gordon via Twitter, her blog and a raised profile, Guido thinks there is no need for Sarah Brown to go on Sesame Street.

She already lives on Downing Street with a Grouch…

The FT has it “on good authority that John Woodcock, one of Brown’s two spokesmen, is to quit; the move could come soon.” He is after his old boss Hutton’s seat.  Now is he the one who, post McBride, went round telling the Lobby that he would have Guido for breakfast or was it the other one, Michael Dugher?

They come and go so fast in Downing Street nowadays you barely have time to get them in your crosshairs…

Brown’s bunker debacle reads well in German, this was sent in by a co-conspirator from yesterday’s Der Spiegel. The many “Downfall” videos circulating emphasise the strength of the bunker metaphor (latest euro “Downfall” here). Mandelson is obviously the Goebbels character, a propagandist true believer until the bitter end, Yvette is Eva Braun, the only woman in the bunker the misogynist-in-chief doesn’t detest. Damian McBride would obviously be his dog “Blondi”. Can co-conspirators cast the other bunker players?