Intriguing news tonight via Paul Waugh: Balls has brought in Gary Follis to be his new Chief of Staff. Before a brief stint in the real world, Follis was SpAd to Nick Brown (Gordon’s Chief Whip and Commander of the “Forces of Hell”). As talk of the Balls’ lasagne plots spread, Guido has to wonder how Miliband feels about “Nick Brown’s boot boy” returning to the fold. It could have been worse though, one exhasperated Labour staffer coughs “it’s the job he wanted to give to Damian. It’s still pretty much a declaration of war on Ed though…”

UPDATE:

While Guido was over at PoliticsHome, laughing at that development, he noticed that the latest chapter in the Aidan Burley Nazi-gate story didn’t take very long to fall apart. Burley was accused by a teenager on Twitter of sleeping during a Holocaust lecture. It turns out that the teacher who organised the trip, on which said teenager conveniently managed to recognise Burley, is a Labour councillor:

“After the lecture, Ms Reeves confronted Dr Smith and Burley and (wrongly) assumed the doctor was a Tory aide. Ms Reeves is then alleged to have told Smith and Burley that she knew Ed Miliband…”

Playing politics on a trip to Auschwitz. Stay classy.

The Peoples’ Republic of Lambeth seem to have their priorities right:

No cut in the advertising budget then…

Via LewisCPS

Labour rent-a-fog-horn Rachel Reeves has been in the headlines again today calling for “those with the broadest shoulders and those with responsibility for creating the crisis” to be made to pay. What about those that have subsequently left the financial sector?  

Reeves worked for HBOS from 2006 to 2009. If she’s going to continue proposing historical punishments for failure, should she not declare any bonus payments she received in that time and whether she waived them? How much was her bonus?

Did she even deserve one for “exceptional work”? After all HBOS ended up partially state-owned when Lloyds Banking Group was bailed out…

When Labour announced that they were moving their HQ from 39 Victoria Street, they spun that it was in order to bring the party machine closer to the Leader of the Opposition’s operation in Parliament. Well that line has fallen apart pretty quickly with the announcement that they are moving barely a couple of hundred metres. In the opposite direction.

Given that the only result on GoogleMaps for “Brewers Green”, where the Labour NEC say the new offices are, is even further from Parliament, Guido is going to believe his Labour drinking companion the other night who claimed the only reason for the move was because the party could not afford the rent in their current location.

What’s that line about organisation and breweries? 

When presented with a cartoon picture of some boobs on a beer pump, Labour MPs in Westminster took us back to seventies student union politics and demanded it be banned. Jane Merrick’s column yesterday is well worth a read on the issue. Guido thinks the Sisters should take a leaf out of their European comrades book. Take for example the adverts for the EU Parliament’s in-house beautician.

Anyone offended on the continent?

Via England Expects

Though no longer an MP, Jacqui Smith is still lingering around. Today she’s gone violently off message in her weekly column for Lord Sainsbury’s Continuity-Tony faction, Progress:

“We need a ‘prawn cocktail’ offensive for the 21st century – a ‘scallops and celeriac purée’ offensive, a ‘baked figs and goats cheese’ offensive – anyway, you get my point. In the 1980s and 1990s, energetic Labour spokespeople led by then City minister Tony Blair toured the private dining rooms of the City trying to decontaminate the Labour brand with leading business people.”

She criticises Ed’s banker bashing and echoes David Miliband’s warnings of business desertion, before finally concluding:

“I want to see Ed, Ed, Chuka and Rachel on the telly, but I also want them to be in private dining rooms across the City and beyond – making the contacts, generating the policy ideas and building the consensus which will translate into a serious new business and industrial policy for the next Labour government.”

But Ed is doing that Jacqui. He’s using shady spinmeister Roland Rudd to set up all sorts of secret meetings with these types.

He refuses to release who was at the dinners though, because he is embarrassed.

Maybe you could ask him yourself, and let us know?

Ed is having a relatively good week, with more amusement and less despair. Labour staffers however are decrying that the Shadow Cabinet is out of control and rudderless. Douglas Alexander’s “Labour must do more to be credible on economy” Observer interview last Sunday came at as surprise. Jim Murphy going rogue had to be patched up as “part of the strategy”, while it’s accepted that Liam Byrne is spending his days briefing the Telegraph. Peter Hain even had time to write his memoirs while supposedly preparing to form a government. 

This lack of authority in Shadow Cabinet is trickling down to the backbenchers, not least the most important Labour backbencher of them all – David Miliband. There is growing frustration amongst Labour whips that David  is simply ignoring direct orders on voting.  He’s said he will not be dictated to, and he will decide when he is needed. Take today for example; instead of being in Westminster David is peacocking at the Cambridge Union; and the voting data from Public Whip is very telling. Since the election David has voted in just 186 votes out of a possible 444. Less than half and well below average. 

The insubordination is spreading. Labour sources indicate that the likes of Ben Bradshaw and Shaun Woodward are particularly good at not hanging around for late votes or simply not bothering to turn up. Junkets are up, and attendance is down. The mood among the old guard can be summed up as “if the brother can ‘eff off to China, why can’t we?”

Dennis Skinner just leaned over and asked Ed Balls "What is Lasagne, anyway?"
Ah…the virtues of good Northern cooking!—
Barry Gardiner MP (@BarryGardiner) January 31, 2012

Guido isn’t sure whether he believes this one, but it’s a great line anyway.

After the Mail ran with Sophy Ridge’s blog post about the Balls’ lasagne plot, it’s become the hottest ticket in town.

Skinner’s invite must have got lost in the post… 

Another day and another defection from Labour by a young activist claiming that Ed is leading the party off a cliff. Tara Hewitt, 26, is “a diversity consultant from Liverpool and former Labour Students National LGBT Officer”. She was on Luciana Berger’s Liverpool Wavertree team, but now she’s a “proud new member of David Cameron’s “new” Conservative Party.” Luke Bozier seems to have started a trend, and Hewitt is rather blunt:

“Once it was Tony Blair’s Labour party that held the progressive ground in UK politics supporting business and encouraging wider participation within the party. But now times have changed we see Ed Miliband isolating the labour party from businesses and isolating himself from the Trade Unions that supported him just 15 Months ago.

We are facing one of the most difficult economic periods in history and the message from the labour leader and Ed Balls is “we cant make any promises” political speech for “we have no solutions”. Unlike the two Eds, David Cameron is leading the conservative led government by making bold decisions on welfare reform, education, health and imigration and George Osborne has been honest and frank about what is needed to help fix Britain’s broken economy.” 

On her website she thanks Louise Mensch for all her helpful advice…

When he’s not fibbing on Twitter, Denis MacShane is sounding off in the House. Take yesterday’s gem of an intervention during DCLG Questions:

“Frankly it’s not good enough because the department is not publishing spending between 50p and £500 and that is where on credit cards and other areas a lot of things go wrong, so can we actually have some transparency in this wretched department instead of the cover-up they are currently practising?”

Not only did MacShane’s facts “go wrong” – credit card spending under £500 is published, but this is from a man under police investigation for his dubious use of public money and the subsequent “cover-up”. Scotland Yard are still looking into those “wretched”  invoices, laptops and that garage. Labour have withdrawn the whip from MacShane, yet he still insists on hanging around on their benches like a bad smell.

Time for someone to have a quiet word…