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.

Ed has been touring a hospital today, he even did a Q&A. It didn’t get any coverage though. David on the other hand has gone for the full house, popping up on Sky this lunchtime. He really likes his brother:

Got it? Good.

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?

Opening up on the BBC this morning, David Miliband said “we talk to each other, he’s my brother”.  There must have been a rather blunt conversation after his interesting assessment of Labour’s problems in last week’s Staggers.

The King Over the Water decried the “soap opera” and claimed to be trying to “minimise” it, whilst simultaneously stirring it up:

“I lost an election. I didn’t take a decision not to think. I didn’t take a Trappist vow that said that I’m never going to say anything again.” 

There was plenty of praise for Ed, but David refused to rule out a return to the front-line one day. The tragicomedy rumbles on…

UPDATE:

@GuidoFawkes David Miliband is the Michael Potillo of the Labour party—
David (@cleverblok) February 06, 2012

Quite.

As he calls the nations’ media to Reuters, Canary Wharf for a briefing tomorrow morning about his future business plans, Ed’s attacks on capitalism are gaining traction around the world. He’s becoming a serious player:

The head of Iran’s judiciary announced on Wednesday that the courts will readily “issue death penalties” to the “disruptors” of the country’s foreign currency market. ISNA reports that Ayatollah Sadegh Amoli Larijani emphasized that the judiciary will deal with those who have been “identified as economic disruptors” just as it would with “smugglers, bandits and drug traffickers.”

While we are on the subject of banker bashing, some strong words from Peston in an interview with Standard:

“He ums and ahs for a moment and then, with a rare edge of crossness, eschewing his usual idiosyncratic syntax, gives a startlingly clear reply: “Look, I do think it’s completely inappropriate for bankers to be earning these colossal sums. Completely inappropriate.

There are certain people who I regard as being just evil but I don’t regard people who make a lot of money and don’t do anything useful with it as evil.” He stops and thinks for a second. “Just misguided and bonkers.”"

Are these comments really appropriate from the neutral Business Editor of our state broadcaster?

Poor old Ed even gets thinly veiled attacks from his brother in his good weeks – The Telegraph have splashed David’s intervention. Luckily for Ed, on the back of his Commons outings this week, David’s subtle dig won’t cause too much of a headache for the Labour leader, but it fits with the overall pattern of David’s behaviour that Guido mentioned yesterday.

The seven point plan for rehabilitation that he sets out in his Staggers article doesn’t seem to have a shelf life…

There is now a clear and public split between the Miliband brothers over matters of strategy. As Guido reported earlier, David Miliband isn’t taking orders from anyone, and you can sure as hell bet that his piece in this week’s New Statesman was not approved:

“For some, this will be seductive. Reassurance about our purpose, our relevance, our position, even our morals. Reassurance Labour feels good. But feeling good is not the same as doing good – and it gets in the way when it stops us rethinking our ideas to meet the challenges of the time. And now is a time for restless rethinking, not reassurance. Our attacks on the Tories will not work if we are not clear about what we did. We should say loud and clear where we made mistakes, but we should also insist that the list of gains far outstripped the mistakes. After all, even David Cameron said on coming to office that Britain was better in 2010 than 1997.”

In the call to arms he also says the big state is a “political dead end”.  Nobody seems to have told his brother though…

Guido just broke from his lunch to chuckle at this breaking news. With overwhelming public support for the benefit cap, this is risky for Ed. A couple of good PMQs performances is not vindication for his entire outlook. Developing…

UPDATE: This graph from the Speccie a few weeks ago says it all:

Just as it was all going so well for Ed…

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?”