Guido isn’t quite sure what to make of Jacqui Smith throwing some shapes…

Dave “What is on offer isn’t in Britain’s interests, so I didn’t agree to it. “

Guido can’t think why the Tories decided to pull IDS from the Daily Politics today. He’s said to be fuming, particularly at Ken Clarke, and made said fury perfectly clear over the phone to him this morning. Owen Paterson has been stirring things up too. Either way it was the Pilgrims™ section of the show that Guido particularly enjoyed:

Leaving aside her terrible attempt at justifying the practice of full-time taxpayer-funded trade union officials, Reeves had the cheek to try and claim that she was not funded by Unite the Union. She acknowledged that they gave her Leeds West Constituency money (£1,500 in May 2009 and another £1,500 in the April before the election), but she categorically denied she had received money directly from Unite:

“I don’t get any money from a trade union…”

In November 2007, two months after being selected as Labour’s candidate for Leeds West, Rachel Reeves declared a donation from Unite of £1,979.50 to the Electoral Commission. Donation Ref. No. C0002459 was paid directly to one Ms Rachel Reeves.

A trillion in cuts in the first year. Sod the salami slicing, it’s time to take out whole departments. We could learn a lot…

We’re a bit under the weather in the Guy Newsroom, sniffling and headaches not caused by the usual reasons we have sniffling and headaches. So we have gone for the Jura whisky, honey, hot-water and Lemsip cure. Sort of like a medicinal whisky sour. It feels better already. Jura, send more medicine, please…

Tatiana Limanova, an award-winning journalist and host of a Russian national news show on the REN-TV channel, reported on the APEC summit in the United States, giving a traditional gesture a moment after mentioning Obama. The station’s owner is close to Vladamir Putin, Tatiana has now been fired. Guido is unable to confirm that she has been offered a job on Fox News…

Guido has seen a rather excitable internal UKIP memo that celebrates Farage’s “who do you think you are speech” hitting half a million views. It’s been translated into Greek, Spanish, German and Polish. The email decries the lack of press coverage in this country, but notes abroad, on places like Fox News “Nigel is featured more prominently and in much more heroic light than at home”. The original on English version, plus the foreign combined copies, have been seen by nearly 600,000:

Well on target for Guido’s prediction of a million views. Are they listening yet?

Last Friday Guido noticed a speech that Nigel Farage had given in the European Parliament a couple of days previously was creeping up into the thousands of views on YouTube. So he decided to give it a bit of a push. It was one of the most retweeted stories from this blog for months:

The savage take down of the European-elites and their frankly shocking disregard for democracy in the face of a threat to their golden project had all the hallmarks of a Hannan-style sensation. Guido predicted it would hit a million views and he stands by that. Just four days later it’s at 300,000. The truth is powerful…

Nigel Farage’s “What gives you the right?” speech from Wednesday is bang on the money and going viral with nearly 50,000 views in two days:

The officials in the chamber always laugh when Farage holds up the mirror, but those smirks are looking more and more like gallows humour every day. Even Mrs Fawkes, who is not in the least interested in politics, wanted the volume turned up when she overheard this one…