Summer party season is in full swing, but you would think there would be some coordination with diaries. Although there are a limited number of days before the MPs jet off for the holidays, crowds will be dissipated tonight. Village dwellers have the choice between 18.00 and 20.00 of the ComRes and Apex Communications gig, Total Politics and Weber Shandwick’s new Members reception, The Adam Smith Institute book launch, a Big Brother Watch party and Conservative Way Forward’s summer party with Maggie. There will be some sore heads tomorrow…

Rather than dash around Westminster trying to get to all of these, Guido thinks he will just save himself for a slightly more exclusive party later. He is hoping lots of other Ed Balls fans join him at Blinky’s little party that is going on tonight. Apparently there will be a chat about how the campaign is going, which hopefully won’t dampen the mood too much. Drinks will be served from 20.30 in Norman Shaw South, Rm 102. Hope there are nibbles…

Hidden subsidies cost the taxpayers millions of pounds in order to finance the lifestyles of MPs, yet the fearless political reporters of the Lobby don’t seem too keen on reporting this hidden subsidy. Could it be because they too enjoy the taxpayer subsidised bars of the Parliamentary Estate?

The Speaker says he wants to bring prices in to line with High Street prices. In another piece of evidence based blogging you won’t see in the newspapers Guido has been fearlessly investigating what exactly are the prevailing market conditions around Westminster.

As the chart below shows, the average price of a pint of a Guinness is £3.45.  MPs pay a mere £2.20 for a pint and the taxpayers make up the difference. Prices would have to rise 57% for them to match what the public pays in and around the Westminster area. They still know how to look after themselves don’t they?

MPs have no excuse for this subsidy and last Tuesday’s scenes of mass drunkeness hardly reflect well on Parliament. The first thing they should do to discourage that sort of behaviour is put the prices up to market rates, cheap drink has after all literally been their downfall. In these austere times of public sector cutbacks is it simply not justifiable for MPs to expect us to subsidise their drinking. Time please, drink up gentlemen, lets be having you…

One of the great things about EyeSpy.MP (or the “phantom blogger” as Sir Michael White mistakenly calls it) is that it reveals the truth about MPs actual behaviour.  Next time an MP whines about being poorly paid and hard working because of all those late night sittings, ask him what really happens during those sessions? Do they scrupulously scrutinise legislation and make speeches of great oratory?

No they get drunk and gossip. Last night the PLP was getting pissed and occasionally wandering into the lobbies to vote. Here are a selection of EyeSpy.MP tweets from last night:

4 out of 5 Lab leadership contenders on the terrace taking advantage of rare late night sitting to be matey (or trying to be in case of D & E Miliband).

Last night: Balls, Burnham and Ed Miliband in the Kremlin buying pints for down-market North East Labour MPs

Why aye man, it’s Sharon Hodgson pet! Skulling a vat of white wine. Drunk as a skunk.

0130: Tired and emotional Dennis Macshane stinging drinking companions for expensive glasses of Sancerre on the Terrace

0200: Ed Balls the last Labour leadership contender left on the Terrace – still drinking pints with the NE mafia!

Bear in mind some of these MPs will have been drinking subsidised beer since tea-time.  In many cases they will be completely drunk when voting and the whips basically roll them into the lobbies. In how many jobs outside the entertainment industry is it acceptable to be completely intoxicated in the workplace? Makes you proud of our great parliamentary democracy doesn’t it…

Cameron and Clegg made their entrance together to the Speccie’s summer party last night, either as a statement or out of convenience. Cameron was at ease among his own people. Clegg looked a little glum, like a newly wed wife who realises too late that her husband keeps company of which she really doesn’t  approve.

The Speccie – slogan: “Champagne for the Brain” – provided champagne in a straight glass to one of Dave’s minders, which Guido could have sworn was passed furtively to the PM, no iPhone snap will be on the Mirror’s front-page this time. Picture evidence implies Bucks Fizz…

Dave worked the room with good grace. Clegg looked uncomfortable with the editorial descendants of the weekly magazine which called for the deportation of the Tolpuddle Martyr’s children. He seemed a bit stiff among his new progressive friends like Kelvin MacKenzie, Taki, Liddle, Janet Daley, Fraser Nelson plus allies like Andy Coulson and Lord Ashcroft. Danny “Beaker” Alexander was in his element, enjoying being slapped on the back by political adults and congratulated on his fiscal restraint. Beaker’s new SpAd Julia Goldsworthy was wearing a demure little black number which would not look out of place at the upcoming £4,500-a-table Tory Black and White Ball.

Clegg really should be like his junior colleagues, and learn how to lie back and enjoy coalition…

Which loud mouthed heckler found themselves on the wrong end of the Deputy Speaker Alan Haselhurst late into last night’s late sitting?

“I am sorry to interrupt the hon. Gentleman. There are certain right Hon. and Hon. Members who are not serving the dignity of the House particularly well at the present time. At all times we should discuss things in a calm and reasonable manner, particularly, I suggest to the House, a subject of this nature.”

You would think while discussing rape and the sensitive circumstances surrounding it, that Members would be able to contain themselves from jeering and interrupting from the back benches, but given it was a late sitting just before midnight it seems one member may have enjoyed the pre-debate refreshments a little too much. Judge  for yourself here (from about 23.15). The increasingly irate Deputy Speaker had to wade in again, this time with more of a warning to the obvious frothing, almost slurring, culprit – Labour’s rent-a-thug Denis MacShane:

“Order. The Right Hon. Member for Rotherham is behaving disgracefully and not assisting a debate of this kind. Now, he really has enough experience of this House, as a Minister and as a Back Bencher, to realise that what he is doing is out of tune with how we should conduct our business in this House. I hope that I will not hear from him again.”

A sentiment Guido agrees with wholly.

See you later.

“Good things come to those who wait.”

*Still waiting for a “free sample”.

UPDATE : Many thanks to Corney & Barrow for the offer of a free Guinness.

The Chief Medical Officer, Dr Liam Donaldson, full of festive cheer, warns “The more [children] get a taste for it, the more likely they are to be heavy drinking adults or binge drinkers later in childhood.” Does he have any hard evidence for this?

Guido’s dummy was dipped in brandy and it never did him any harm…

Yesterday Mrs Bercow told the Standard of her “ladette” two bottles of wine and one night stands past. Many often wonder how the pint-sized Speaker managed to end up with the six foot something “cross between Jerry Hall, Lady Macbeth and Eva Peron” and now thanks to this morning’s Metro everything becomes clearer:

Speaker John Bercow has been credited as the author of a sex tip guide which told men how to “pick up drunk girls … ‘The John Bercow Guide’ to understanding women” appeared in ‘Armageddon’, a Conservative student magazine, in 1986 – when Bercow was a Lambeth councillor. The guide included categories on ‘How to pick up drunk girls’, ‘How to pick up virgins’, ‘How to pick up refined girls’, ‘How to get rid of a girl during sex’ and ‘How to get rid of a girl after sex’.

Like global warming, the John Bercow Guide’s pick-up strategies are an interesting theory.  Guido isn’t entirely sure lines like “If you’re free later maybe we could go back to your place and name your breasts” ever really work.  In fact funnily enough Guido can’t recall Bercow even having a girlfriend back in those days.  Anyway he has done well to land an experienced girl like Sally, particularly now she has sobered up.

Guido thinks Sally looks vaguely familiar, but it was over a decade ago, Guido was very, very drunk that night and was never good at remembering names…

UPDATE : Bad Al Campbell, another reformed drunk, is sticking up for Sally. What a surprise…

Guido wandered into the Fabian’s Christmas party on the terrace of the Houses of Parliament. The booze, Guido noticed with some amusement, was sponsored by Serco, the private-sector outsourcing outfit.  That irony would see the Fabian’s founders, the Clause Four authoring Webbs, spinning in their graves.  Sunda Katawala told the assembled drinkers that Fabian Society membership was at an historic high, which is quite an achievement  by him given Labour Party membership is at an historic low.

Yvette Cooper was the star turn, Guido was mesmerised by her green leather boots so didn’t follow the thread of her argument closely, think it involved Etonians eating babies and David Cameron personally slaughtering first borns at Sure Start centres.  She did a lot of that head-nodding thing she does for emphasis.

The former Defence Minister Eric Joyce seemed demob happy and confirmed just how miffed Cathy Newman was when Guido beat her to getting his resignation story out.

When the booze ran out Guido slipped into the Stranger’s Bar for some subsidised Guinness (think of it as a tax-rebate) and chatted with blogging Labour MPs Greg Pope (also demob happy) and Tom Harris.  Late in the evening a tired and emotional Peter Kilfoyle exploded at the bar “You’re Guido Fawkes, you’re Guido Fawkes” ranting bitterly about a story exposing him for paying his daughter’s firm out of expenses.  He tried to have Guido thrown out of the bar, shouting to the patient barman about the injustices of this blog’s editorial policies.  Guido was a little worried that the red-in-the-face Kilfoyle was going to have a coronary…

Lovely to see dozens of co-conspirators last night.  No doubt there will be embarrassing pictures.  Thanks to everyone who bought Guido a Guinness, it went better than you think with the Pimms.  The Karoake later in the evening was legend.  Guido then found himself in a nightclub full of teenagers in Soho at one in the morning, realised he was the “Disco Daddy” and left.   Mrs Fawkes was very understanding about the lack of keys and directed her husband to the spare room.