A great signing for the Telegraph: Kelvin MacKenzie has been snapped up as a weekly columnist. His first effort asks why the Prime Mentalist has been popping in for cosy chats with Keir Starmer, the Director of Public Prosecutions.

That’ll be one for the PCC then…

27 executives put their names to a letter in the FT this morning praising international aid. The names were gathered by Brendan Fox, former SpAd to Gordon Brown and current Save the Children policy director, where he works with Justin Forysth, another ex-Gordon spinner. So do the signatories have anything in common? BP, Pearson, BT, Xstrata and Reckitt Benckiser all signed the letter, all either are or have been clients of top City spinners Brunswick. Brunswick are in turn run by Alan Parker, a friend of Gordon who is also in charge of Save the Children. Surely all just coincidence…

How refreshingly honest of the Prime Mentalist to admit that his abandoned constituents are “hard-pressed and increasingly angry”. Gordon’s last question about Dalgety Bay left him with egg on his face, and yesterday he was embarrassed again by Defence minister Andrew Robathan:

“I will explain why we dispute much of what the right hon. Gentleman has said in a moment, but there is one thing that I particularly dispute. I know that when he was Prime Minister, and indeed when he was Chancellor of the Exchequer, he was very profligate with public money.

He was very willing to spend it, and then to leave us in the appalling financial condition in which we now find ourselves. I must tell the right hon. Gentleman that we take a rather more parsimonious and sensible view than I think he did when it comes to the spending of our constituents’ money… In closing, may I say how pleased I am to see the right hon. Gentleman in the House?”

Makes you wonder why he bothers…

The Prime Mentalist is gracing us with his presence in the House tomorrow, having secured a debate about cleaning up radiation on a beach in his constituency. Let’s hope he puts in a little more preparation for his speech than he did for the written parliamentary questions he has been asking the Ministry of Defence recently. The replying Ministers politely pointed out that the MoD no longer owns the beach site in question and environmental issues are devolved to the Scottish government and are no longer Westminster’s concern. If he turned up a bit more, he might know these things…

Best wishes to the Prime Mentalist as he turns 62 today. Twelve months without speaking in Parliament, £6,000 and more on air fares at our expense, £300,000-a-month in cash that is definitely not paid to him, an attendance record to be ashamed of, landing his successor in it, not to mention the worst of omens for His Holiness.

And that’s forgetting Gordon’s Olympic nightmare and his – shall we say – awkwardness at the Leveson Inquiry. To celebrate, why not enjoy his greatest hits one more time…

Last year the jet-setting Prime Mentalist came under fire for blowing taxpayers’ cash on flights from Scotland to London. Though most Scottish MPs take the train south of the border, Guido learns that over just a three-month period last summer Brown claimed almost £6,000 on expenses for air travel from Scotland to the capital. That despite not speaking in the House for a year.

Incidentally, in the last month he has declared over £320,000 in cash from speeches and advisory work that definitely goes to towards the full running costs of his office, and the rest he totally gives away to charity. With his once loyal lieutenants twisting the knife today and running for the hills, isn’t it time Gordon took the hint?  

What a difference a few years makes. Here is Ed Miliband in 2008, defending Gordon Brown’s abolition of the 10p tax rate:

“When you make a big set of changes in the tax system, some people do lose out. That is a matter of regret. Of course it is. But overall these changes make the tax system fairer.”

In 2008 he agreed it was fair, now Ed and Ed are landing their old boss in it. “Gordon Brown was wrong”…

The Pope is resigning, the first to do so since Gregory XII in 1415.

It was all so predictable…

Rare sighting of Gordon Brown (Retired) MP [PICTURE] http://t.co/gOA4ziW7—
Eye Spy MP (@eyespymp) January 29, 2013

Nice of the Prime Mentalist to show up for a vote concerning him keeping his own seat rather than, you know, speaking on the budget or a matter of national security.

How good it was of the Prime Mentalist to turn up yesterday. Here is one he will no doubt want to skip however: the Great Gordon Brown Repeal bill is to be debated in Parliament next week. The proposal to reverse Labour’s scrapping of the 10p tax rate will be discussed by MPs at 2:30pm next Tuesday. Guido hears Gordon will be receiving a formal invitation…