Guido got wind last week that Mehdi Hasan had been sacked as Political Editor of the New Statesman. When we put it to him he exploded…

@GuidoFawkes Simple question: are you a tit?—
Mehdi Hasan (@ns_mehdihasan) May 16, 2012

Well it now seems Guido was on the money and the Staggers were just being nice by not announcing his departure last week along with other internal movements. He’s bagged a massive promotion in both status and influence by joining the Huffington Post.  Guido just spoke to one of Mehdi’s fellow lefty hacks:

Lefty: Has he been fired?
GF: Well he’s going to the HuffPo, so you could put it like that.
Lefty: Oh god that’s worse than being fired. That’s worse than being dead.

Are they going to pay him?

See also: Mehdi is “The Commentator” and a chart of the New Statesman’s newsstand sales during the Mehdi era:

Ken Livingstone has a tendency to shoot his mouth off and says things which are inadvisable, like criticising politicians for cosying up to News International when he himself is no stranger to Wapping:

Incidentally when Guido tweeted this picture yesterday twitter-idiots claimed it was a fake. It is absolutely genuine.

At the London Jewish Forum last night under pressure about his tax affairs Ken promised again that the certified Silveta accounts would be published online “shortly”. No sign of them yet. Only 20 days since he first promised he would..

Sky’s Jon Craig reports that Labour are dragging their feet in arranging an office for George Galloway. He has taken up residence in the Portcullis House Atrium as spotted by EyeSpyMP last week. Lots of rubbish Gorgeous?

UPDATE:

Things are getting steamy down on the ground in Bradford with George Galloway threatening to sue the Labour Party for texts that are being bombarded to voters. There is no proof the Labour campaign had anything to do with them and they deny the accusation. Now today Galloway supporters are fighting back and a message urging people to vote Respect is doing the rounds with some bitter words for the Labour candidate:

“Muslims of Bradford! Watch the Sunday Politics yorkshire and lincolnshire programme on BBC iPlayer (43min-47min) and watch the TRAITOR, and SELLOUT Imran Hussain (labour candidate) support British troops to continue their occupation of Afghanistan, despite his own party leaders position on withdrawing from Afghanistan. See for yourself and vote Respect, the party that is actually speaking up for the loss of innocent muslims lives…”

With Galloway’s odds tightening, polling day tomorrow could be a tense affair…

UPDATE: Ladbrokes have suspended betting on a Galloway win.

A LibDem Peer who was sacked as their health spokesman for anti-Israeli comments in 2010, has struck again. Video has emerged online of Jenny Tonge telling a meeting at Middlesex University last week:

“Beware Israel. Israel is not going to be there forever
…
It will not go on forever, it will not go on forever. Israel will lose it’s support will lose its support and then they will reap what they have sown.”

She also remained silent and did not protest when a fellow panellist, Ken O’Keefe, compared Jews to Nazis. Given Tonge has previous in this area, that includes accusing an IDF aid team of harvesting organs and spinning for Palestinian suicide bombers, Guido had to check whether Tonge still actually had the LibDem whip. She has, but is Nick Clegg really prepared to let her spew this sort of bile while serving under his party banner?

UPDATE: The Commentator has a full witness account of Jihad Jenny’s outburst.

Oh dear, that nice little old lady who took against Andrew Lansley is no stranger to protest stunts. June Hautot, a former Unison rep, told the Workers Revolutionary Party magazine last month:

‘I’m all for occupations. That’s our only ammunition to stop closures’. 

She also once attempted to sue Wandsworth Council over plans to develop Battersea Power Station, but her looney-left activism doesn’t stop there. According to the Glasgow Herald in 1997 she “shared a cell with Mrs Scargill” after she was arrested with Arthur’s wife protesting open cast mines. It was inevitable this seasoned activist was going to have her moment.

Why on earth didn’t Lansley go round the back or through the Cabinet Office?

UPDATE: Even Labour are distancing themselves. Sources get in touch to say that say Hautot is a trot. In 2002 she stood as a “Save our Services” candidate in Wandsworth’s Southfields in a bid to try to defeat the Tory cabinet member for care services, Jan Leigh. Of course Leigh easily won and all Hautot did was collapse Labour’s vote.

Actor Patrick Stewart boldly goes where multi-millionaire leftie luvvies have never gone before and fires a photon torpedo at the Coalition in the Staggers:

“I have nothing but contempt for the expression ‘we’re all in this together’. That’s bullshit – we’re not all in this together. The members of the cabinet are not in the same position as the people who live near me in Bermondsey.”

Or indeed the people that used to live near him in California. At this house:

Seems he’s an expert at not being in this together.

Guido won’t bother with the fashion round up this time, but devout nicotine addict Laurie Penny popped up on our television again this lunchtime, complete with a fake cigarette. Jackie Ashley had dropped out at the last minute from appearing on the Daily Politics, so our favourite flame-haired firebrand was called up to fill in. In the course of the interview she offered her services as chairman of RBS, declaring that she could do Hester’s job without the paycheck. Guido is sceptical…

Leaving aside the differences between turning around an enormous multinational financial institution and jetting around teenage trouble-spots with a smartphone, let’s just see what Penny’s comrades at the Occupy movement could teach us about running a bank:

“Following criticism of the way in which the camp’s financial affairs have been run, the finance group quit en masse. That included the person who has the key for the safe — with the result that no one could access the money. Coupled with the fact that donations are now lagging behind expenditure, there has been a serious shortage of money to pay for things such as food and power. Protester Leo Ashford, 20, …told reporters that despite generous donations by supporters, money had been squandered. ‘We’re protesting against bankers, and no one on our finance team knows how to use a ledger or a receipt,’ he said.‘In the second week we had public opinion on our side and enough donations to sustain ourselves. We all could have had brand-new tents and blow-up mattresses. Now no one knows where the money has gone. ‘I’m sad, but I knew a month ago that it would get to the point where we would collapse in on ourselves on essentially our own stupidity.’”

Watching the Penny, you better hope the pounds could look after themselves.

Video via @LiarPoliticians

Guido is happy to welcome Jacking Ashley into the Don’t Unseat Ed Miliband Association, but he’s not sure she’s doing the cause any favours with this morning’s hysterical hyperbole. While discussing Ed’s critics she compares their behaviour to US Marines urinating on dead Afghans:

“It’s a game that the Westminster village has always enjoyed. Nick Clegg was last year’s victim, now it’s Ed’s turn. If enough pundits treat him as the US marines treated the Afghan dead, and if the public notices and reflects this contempt back through opinion polls, then somehow or other he might collapse.”

They even link back to the Guardian’s own coverage of the incident, just in case you missed this gloriously unsubtle point. Guido is still trying to work out whether the comparison with holding the Leader of the Opposition to account was done with a straight face. He has a feeling it was…

Ronald Reagan said they were “I’m from the government and I’m here to help”, but this sentence is a new contender: “he will be forced to undertake diversity training”. A Tory councillor has been suspended for five months for using the word “retard” on Twitter. Hardly the most sensible choice of words, but the punishment seems rather disproportionate.

It’s not like he said mong, loon, spaz or nutter.