Much to SamCam’s distress, Dave was forced cancel his Christmas holiday to Thailand in 2010. He was meant to have been the guest of fellow old Etonian, and then Prime Minister, Abhisit Vejjajiva. However the little matter of a coup d’etat and the shooting of dozens of peace protesters made the trip a little tricky. Since July, Abhisit has been in opposition and is under investigation by the Thai Department of Special Investigations for over ninety deaths. That’s wasn’t enough to put one British leader off from pressing the flesh yesterday though:

Our Tone always pops up in the most interesting of places. Where next… Syria?

“Len McCluskey is entitled to his views but he’s wrong. I’m changing Labour so we can deliver fairness with less money.”

Sixteen-year-old conference darling Rory Weal had barely sat down before Guido’s inbox started to fill up. His schoolmates were particularly unimpressed with their rebranded chum:

“I attend Rory’s school and know full well that he does not speak in the way he did… the dropped letters all added to his persona..”

There was also some surprise from his classmates that while tear jerking in his speech that since the withdrawal of EMA-dole for students he can’t afford pencils for school, it seems he can in fact afford a £499 iPad to tweet his tales of poverty from:

Did he buy that with his EMA?

The Mail have details of the privately educated Rory’s privileged upbringing. When his property developer father’s firm went bust he had estates worth £2.25million and Rory experienced some social mobility, moving from his private school to a grammar school. Did nobody at Labour HQ take a moment to do a background check, or were they too busy tweaking the speech they wrote for him?

Whilst Rory has been compared to Tory Boy Hague, Guido thinks young Rory is more of a Blair in the making. Remember Tony’s mockney Estuary English. As with Rory the preferred narrative of that public school boy who went on to be PM was a bit more proletarian than the reality. As Rory’s grandma says, like Blair, “he’s a brilliant actor”…

Speaking to Bloomberg News at the billionaire’s bunfight which is Davos, Tony Blair pretty much backed the Coalition’s line that the government’s priority should be to cut the deficit. He also echoed George Osborne in blaming the recent poor GDP figures on the bad weather. It will be music to the Cameroons’ ears that “the master” takes their line…

He also suggested that Labour had never used the ”vacuous” slogan “time for a change“, Guido begs to differ and wonders what Tony’s good chum Obama would have to say about that. Looking more orange than even Peter Hain, Guido suspects we won’t be seeing much more of Blair in the run up to polling day – not with the 50% tax rate and everything. He’ll resist the temptation to upstage Brown, it would in any event tarnish his reputation as a thrice-proven election winner to be associated with Brown…

“As soon as TB finished the Q & A session I took him to one side and said I had some good news. I said you remember in 1994 when I said we should try to get the Sun on board and you said you weren’t sure it was possible, well, they are. He thought it was good news in its own right, but was good in the effect it would have on the other side’s morale. I tipped off Mike Brunson at ITN. On one level, it was ridiculous that it should be seen as a big event, but the reality is that is exactly how it is seen. I felt it was a fruit of three years’ hard work, and there will be many more.”

The Cameroons have yet to shake off their awe of Blair, who was admittedly a political genius when it came to strategy. Brown is not Blair, when it comes to strategy he is a political idiot, he may be half blind but his bigger handicap is that he is tone deaf to popular feeling. Guido will frame his argument in terms that may resonate with the Cameroons better than Tim Montgomerie’s obituary for New Labour.

Osborne should ignore the siren calls from the likes of Polly and the Fink for acquiescence, there is no need to draw close to Gordon’s dividing line. Labour in government has once again ended in national financial disaster. Think what would Blair do in this situation?

The New Statesman’s James Macintyre, who often takes his copy straight from Mandelson’s friends with whom he has had a close relationship, says that Mandelson wants to fight on a programme of “prioritisation”. Mandelson wants to change the narrative to accept cuts in spending, in this he is supported by the surviving Blairites including Purnell. The Cameroons must not cede this territory to the Blairites in government. Mandelson knows the time for tax and spend is over, buried in debt and deficits.

So accept Gordon’s dividing lines. Think strategically “what would Blair do?” Now is the time for a clear message of fiscal conservativism and sound money.

*That is what the top marginal rate really amounts to when you include the combined NI of 13.8%.   Feudal serfs had to work 3 days a month for the barons.

Funny, he is rumoured to have wanted exactly the same for David Miliband. Who to believe?

Miliband is the clear beneficiary. Who was on the distribution list? Bets are that Miliband, Blair’s anointed one, was on the list so a “friend” of his could have passed it to the Mail. Mandelson might likely be another member of the “A Team” that would have seen it, so to would Ben Wegg Prosser, who if memory serves Guido correctly, managed previously to get the “leave the stage with them wanting more” memo to Blair onto the front page of the Mail.

The tone of Blair’s memo is brutally frank, he prefaces it by saying a toned down more gentle version will be sent to Brown – clearly he knows Gordon can’t handle the truth…

The thing Guido doesn’t understand is that 1 in 7 people believe Gordon is up to “getting on with job”. Who are these people? Where are they? Nobody really thinks Gordon is up to being PM do they?