Guido was just thinking that blog-favourite Steven Purcell had been quiet for a while, and then just as Miliband headed for Scotland, up he popped again. In another stunning PR success, Labour’s one time Glasgow golden-child, was questioned by police over the weekend about an “assault” that took place at his flat at 5:30am on Sunday morning. Guido understands that Glasgow councillor had been out celebrating the fact that the Crown Office had dropped their investigation into his time as chief of the Labour-led City Council. As we covered extensively at the time, Purcell’s career ended with him in rehab and his criminal associates under the microscope. 

Police were called to an “after party” that got out of hand and punches were thrown in a dispute with an invited guest. Having had their investigation into corruption shunned by the powers that be, Guido imagines that the police were only too happy to wade back in to this one. Purcell was questioned for ten hours.

A younger man was also arrested…

UPDATE: Anna Raccoon has more.

Guido can’t find Harriet Harman’s “first major speech on the future of the media” trailed in any other paper besides this morning’s Guardian. Apparently Ed Vaizey’s DCMS shadow is declaring that she is “going to be a champion of press freedom”:

Before her first major speech on the future of the media, Harman claimed there was a clear consensus around these principles, and last night challenged editors to put forward practical proposals. “I think it would really help Leveson if newspaper editors came forward with a solution. We have had a good scoping of the issues, but now it is time for the editors to lay their cards on the table. They need to propose the solution, rather than have one imposed upon them.”

All this has come as a bit of a surprise to a source with knowledge of the Shadow Culture brief. Guido hears whispers of a meeting last Monday (January 16) where Harman had to be talked out of  supporting the state regulating the press. Just nine days ago Harman was openly advocating imposing the very solution that she derides today. Add to that her track record of trying to censor the tabloids and Page 3 plus her past support for extreme political correctness suggests the idea of her being some sort of champion for free speech becomes risible… 

With Ed continuing to plummet in the polls and Labour peers voting against the wishes of Labour voters on the benefits bill, Guido is not that surprised to learn that a crisis meeting has been called, for after PMQs tomorrow at 1230, there will be a briefing session on public attitudes to Labour and welfare reform in the Shadow Cabinet room for members of the PLP.

The session will be lead by James Morris, who is seconded from pollsters Greenberg Quinlan Rosner to Team Ed. He will break the news to the MPs gently, by running through Labour’s private polling. The Shadow Cabinet will be coaxed towards an understanding of the attitudes of that reality based community, better known as the voting public, with hard data about what the public think about Labour’s position on welfare and welfare reform generally. Guido hopes that Morris will offer a slightly more astute and sophisticated analysis than he tweeted last night:

Poll round up: Labour leads in populus and yougov, level in comres, behind in icm—
James Morris (@JamesDMorris) January 24, 2012

This benefits cap issue is toxic for Labour, who are violently out of sync with the public here, in particular their own lower-income working voters. Oh to be a fly on the wall tomorrow…

New Church of England gospel: go forth and multiply then rest, for thou shalt claim benefits from thy labouring neighbour without limit.—
Guido Fawkes (@GuidoFawkes) January 23, 2012

Today sees the evil Fabians holding their “The Economic Alternative” conference and Ed Balls is the keynote speaker.  To raise the curtain he has an interview with Mary Riddell in the conference edition of the Fabian Review. Print deadlines however mean the interview was given some weeks ago when the party line repeated ad nauseuam was different to what it is this morning. In the interview Balls says of the Tory deficit reduction strategy “Nobody in the Labour Party should get into the idea that it has to be this way”.

What a difference to his Guardian interview this morning in which he claims “My starting point is, I am afraid, we are going to have keep all these cuts.”

Same line of questioning, very different answers. The reality of public scepticism regarding Labour’s credibility on the economy and pressure from Shadow Cabinet realists combined with the weakness of Ed Miliband’s authority has forced Ed Balls to switch to George Osborne’s ‘Plan A’. There is no alternative.

Ed’s eagerly anticipated fightback started this morning with a grilling on the Today Programme where he was cruelly told he wasn’t “too ugly” to be PM. This is being followed shortly by a widely trailed speech at the Oxo Tower on London’s Southbank. Brilliant news for those of us in the Don’t Unseat Ed Miliband Association…

Wags on Twitter may mock about Rubik’s cubes and Oxo cubes, but Ed won’t crumble easily and we in DUEMA are excited. It is a welcome chance for Ed to beef up his performance by delivering more than a stock speech. Critics of Ed always have wanted him to flesh out his definition of predatory capitalism by attacking  the City gravy train, this will be his chance to provide more ‘granularity’.  Oh yes.

So far even loyalists like Mark Ferguson of LabourList are underwhelmed by the advance spin

All the briefing from today's big Ed M speech suggests that there are still no specific policies in the pipeline labli.st/xvamFL—
Mark Ferguson (@Markfergusonuk) January 10, 2012

Pundits expect this to be another stage in the promised journey the Labour leader is taking from awkward Rubik’s cube-solving geek, via the current gaffe-prone ‘Block Ed’ to, hopefully, Oxo man appeal…

… if he doesn’t get into too much of a stew.

Hat-tip for puns:
@DavidJonesMP, @DavidMills, @GregSwinn, @lambgraeme, @heckmonwyke.

Last week it was Glasman, Byrne and Murphy having their say about Labour’s direction under Ed, today it’s his own brother. David Miliband has called for Labour to apologise for more of the things that they got wrong in government. Ed Balls attempted a “sorry we didn’t regulate enough”, but the big brother clearly thinks Ed should go further:

“There’s a debate in the Labour Party about how we should understand our record in government, what we should be proud of and what we should apologise for. But I think it’s very important to be proud of your achievements and humble about your mistakes…”

It is one line in particular that will make waves, he goes on to say in an interview today in India’s The Hindu that: “I think for everyone in the Labour Party, it feels very frustrating at the moment.” 

The source of that frustration of course being his brother… 

The Labour left and the Guardian are getting very worked up about the perfectly reasonable housing benefit cap proposal

“for example Louise Ryan, 41, who lives with her husband and two children in Islington, north London, will see the £438-a-week benefit, which covers the rent, reduced to £340 under the changes to housing benefit introduced this month.”

To just afford that £438 rent those of us who work would have to earn as below:

That rent alone is higher than median wages. It takes the taxes of four people on median wages to cover Louise’s rent. Add on her other benefits and Louise has a household income equivalent to a working family with a household income of over £40,000.  Where is the social justice in paying welfare benefits to people that are higher than the majority of the tax paying working people’s take home pay? This simply cannot continue.

To be fair the Labour shadow work and pensions secretary Liam Byrne recognises this, so the Labour left have begun excoriating him as “a reactionary”. The ubiquitous Owen Jones, author of “Chavs“, is representative of the Labour left. He thinks it is “progressive” to pay out to welfare recipients more in benefits than the majority of working people earn:

"Labour says it supports the principle of the benefit cap" – sorry, what? guardian.co.uk/society/2012/j… That's it – Liam Byrne has to go.—
Owen Jones (@OwenJones84) January 02, 2012

The Guardian reckons thousand of benefit recipients will have to move out of Kensington and Chelsea. Doesn’t your heart bleed? Guido really hopes that Owen Jones succeeds in getting the Labour Party to go into the election with a manifesto commitment to reverse the cap. It will be a huge electoral liability on the doorstep…

Back in the heady days following the election of Ed to the leadership of the Labour Party the conservative journalist Iain Martin warned us all not to underestimate Ed Miliband, he even jocularly formed DUEMA, the “Don’t Underestimate Ed Miliband Association“. On Twitter he would highlight hope for the leadership of Ed Miliband which he warned was much underestimated by among others, David Miliband. As the year wore on the DUEMA membership dwindled and eventually Iain accepted the inevitable following the last PMQs:

Missed PMQs, but seems to have been a major setback for DUEMA (Don't Underestimate Ed Mili Assoc) and plans to bring it out of chapter 11—
Iain Martin (@iainmartin1) December 14, 2011

@edacuk DUEMA (Don't Underestimate Ed Mili Assoc) going into all-night crisis talks. Without govt bailout I'm not sure we can keep it going—
Iain Martin (@iainmartin1) December 14, 2011

@TimMontgomerie DUEMA filed for (intellectual) bankruptcy and is in Chapter 11. But now facing total collapse.—
Iain Martin (@iainmartin1) December 15, 2011

Guido is happy to announce that a private sector solution has been found. This blog has bought the association off the bankruptcy trustees and is rebranding it the “Don’t Unseat Ed Miliband Association“. It will remain a not-for-profit, now with an added Big Society social enterprise dimension. This new direction will result in no loss of #hashtags and we have a business plan to see the association run until 2015. In a sign that this is not a hostile takeover the new management is inviting Iain Martin to stay on as Chairman Emeritus.

Our first goal is to shore up support  for Ed Miliband from the left of the Labour Party. So we recommend that he promises to go into the next general election opposing the government’s proposed £500-a-week cap on housing benefit. Luxury flats are a human right!

Michael Dugher fancies himself as Ed Miliband’s answer to Peter Mandelson. Guido thinks he is as slippery with his spin, but nowhere near as smart as the Dark Lord. Dugher has just emailed out a press release, Guido is ignoring the embargo because he wasn’t a recipient of this press release:

Date: 30 December 2011 17:13:57 GMT

Subject: EMBARGOED NEWS FROM LABOUR: David Cameron promised to clean up politics, but in office he has shown he is utterly out of touch with decent British people – Dugher

Responding to the New Year’s Honours List, Michael Dugher, Labour’s Shadow Cabinet Office Minister said:

“David Cameron promised to clean up politics, but in office he has shown he is utterly out of touch with decent British people. He’s giving a knighthood to Paul Ruddock, who made millions from the collapse of Northern Rock and has given over half a million pounds to the Tories, and another to Gerald Ronson who was jailed for his part in a share-trading fraud.

“This tells you everything you need to know about the Tories’ priorities. At a time when millions of families are struggling to get by, it’s the Tories’ friends in the City who get the rewards.”

ENDS

A bit rich you might think coming from the party that knighted RBS’s Fred Goodwin. Paul Ruddock has a gallery in the British Museum named after him and is chairman of the board of the V & A. He has given tens of millions to charity and is a well know philanthropist. So no surprise that he gets a well deserved knighthood.

Truly shocking that the Tories would give a knighthood to a convicted fraudster. Except they haven’t. Dugher has screwed up again…