Clearly Chuka has been told he needs to learn how to laugh at himself after Wednesday. These will never get old…

UPDATE: Chris Pincher’s powers of prediction are second to none:

Later today Shadow Media Minister Helen Goodman will promise Labour’s first cut in public spending:

Building One Digital Nation 

Helen Goodman MP will announce today (Thursday 9 May) that Labour would invest £75 million in a new programme that would focus on getting more people online and improving people’s digital skills. This new programme would be funded by halving the size of the government’s current super-connected cities programme.

Helen Goodman MP said:

 “There are about 10 million people in the UK who don’t know how to send an email and around 16 million who don’t have other basic digital skills. A Labour government would invest £75 million to ensure that people in Britain are able to get online and are able to perform basic tasks like sending an email.

DCMS sources enthusiastically point out that they are already spending £150 million doing just this. Finally, a firm commitment to cut from Labour…

Moany Keith Vaz is cross about outsourcing of jobs from Westminster, to areas with lower levels of employment:

Sad farewell to longstanding switchboard operators at HOC moved by Capita to Southampton. Next G4S will be asked to do the security #farce—
Keith Vaz MP (@Keith_VazMP) May 09, 2013

Would he be opposed to those big baddies at G4S outsourcing jobs to his own constituency? Well apparently not. Here is Keith welcoming the management of G4S to Leicester just last week, where he praised them for employing 60 people from his local area through a new outsourcing contract:

Who does Keith have to thank for those jobs? The French Ministry of Justice. Farce, indeed…

Labour MP Jon Ashworth is all right on over at the Staggers today:

“When David Miliband announced his resignation as MP for South Shields, there was some suspicion that another so-called ‘London special advisor’ would be parachuted into this supposed rock solid northern Labour bastion. Ed Miliband’s One Nation Labour has genuinely made an effort to widen the pool of figures joining the PLP…”

Yes, shame on all these “London special advisers” parachuted into northern seats. Well said that man. That man being a former “London special adviser” (No.10 Deputy Political Secretary) “parachuted into the supposed rock solid northern Labour bastion” of Leicester for the 2011 by-election. Spun like a true Brown SpAd.

“Royal Mail for sale, Queen’s head privatised.” He’s had worse…

The tension from Labour’s underwhelming performance at the locals last week is boiling over. Last night Peter Hain comically denied he was firing a broadside against Ed Balls for not pulling his weight:

Advance Mischief-making to suggest my coming piece in @ProgressOnline Gdn an attack – coded or otherwise – on anybody in Labour. It's not.—
Peter Hain (@PeterHain) May 07, 2013

It was described by the Guardian as a ‘coded attack’, but now the full piece in Progress is out, the word coded looks like a massive understatement:

“Labour’s Treasury team need to get out on the stump now and work even harder. It shouldn’t just be left to Ed and Harriet to carry the heavy load, whether on the World at One, the Today programme or anywhere else.”

If that is a ‘coded attack’, then bring on the open fireworks. Ever the master of subtly, Hain is so loyal to Miliband, Guido doubts he rumbled Macavity Balls without permission. Though worth remembering the lecture is coming from someone who quit the Shadow Cabinet to make some money…

When the going got tough, Gordon Brown would pull his favourite Macavity trick and disappear. It seems his prodigy Ed Balls has learnt exactly the same trick. There has been a lot of grumbling over the weekend in Labour circles that the Shadow Chancellor all but disappeared in the wake of the local election results and was silent on the airwaves, leaving the mop up to the likes of Chuka and Tom Watson. He managed to Tweet his congratulations to the new MP for South Shields, but apart from that has stuck to local issues in his seat and talking about Shepherd’s Pie. His absence has been noted by more loyal colleagues…

As Guido revealed in his Sun on Sunday column, Tom Watson was right to be upset on the BBC after Labour failed to win back control of Lancashire Council. Despite three stump visits by Ed Miliband, Labour ended up short of the 26 gains needed to take back the Council. The Tories held one seat with a wafer-thin 22 vote majority, so the news that Labour activists on the ground were told that they could wrap up Get Out The Vote activity two hours before the polls closed because apparently “it was in the bag” will hurt. Cat out of the bag, more like…

Last week Labour were very quick to claim that Stuart Hall left the Labour Party 10 years ago. He didn’t get very far it seems; Guido has uncovered this photograph of him opening Stalybridge Labour Club in Tameside last summer with Labour MP Jonathan Reynolds and his predecessor Lord Pendry. When celebrity endorsements go wrong…

See also:

• Former MP’s Early Day Motion Praising Hall
• Stuart Hall’s Lawyers Used Leveson to Threaten Media.

Speaking of awkward letters, union fat cat Red Len McCluskey has written to “all Unite MPs” and New Statesman editor Jason Cowley accusing the Staggers of “distortion”, “sensationalism” and running “untrue” statements from his interview with George Eaton in April. McCluskey reckons “George was intent on a particular story and was not leaving until he had this story” and insists he never called for Liam Byrne and other Blairites to be sacked:

Apparently Unite will now “regard all approaches from the New Statesman with deep suspicion”. Standard practice really…

UPDATE: George Eaton hits back here, in turn accusing McCluskey of “inaccuracies and innuendos”.