Debbie Abrahams almost has Guido feeling sorry for Andy Burnham. The Shadow Health Secretary’s PPS still hasn’t apologised to the House for stupidly repeating “Dr” Eoin Clarke’s lies in PMQs, and now her incompetence has gone a step further. Last night Abrahams somehow thought it would be appropriate to retweet a twitter loon accusing the government of “genocide”:

You would have thought Debbie might have learned her lesson about listening to nutters on the internet…

UPDATE: Abrahams has now deleted the offending retweet, as reported by @DeletedByMPs.

Debbie_abrahams: RT @JamesPhelge: Looks like @David_Cameron Govt are using the Benefits & NHS cuts – and ATOS decis… http://t.co/9Gv7El3f

— Tweets MPs Delete (@deletedbyMPs) January 22, 2013

UPDATE II:

I apologise for inappropriate retweet last pm 1/2

— Debbie Abrahams MP (@Debbie_abrahams) January 22, 2013

Still waiting for that Eoin Clarke apology…

Steve Richards of the Indy is normally level headed, if often wrong. Today however he’s come out with a corker. Tweeting about Barclays he claims:

“This is the Millie Dowler moment for some banks.”

Really Steve, really?

Guido has read Bruce Anderson’s Steve Hilton take down a couple of times now and has come to the conclusion that is worthy of an Order of the OTT. Anyone who has ever drunk in a bar in Westminster will know that Anderson takes personal credit for “discovering” Cameron and tipping him for great things when he was a mere backbencher. Since then he has been his avuncular defender in the press, though just as when he declared Dave to be “our Charles De Gaulle”, sometimes he over plays his hand. Is Steve Hilton feeding a few titbits on his way out of the door really “one of the most despicable instances of disloyalty in political history.” Probably not. And this one was filed before lunch…

UPDATE:

Well connected Bruce Anderson lunching solo in Bank Westminster. Just a bottle of red and a selection of broadsheets for company.

— Eye Spy MP (@eyespymp) May 21, 2012

Poor Jeremy Hunt is getting frightfully carried away with his £12 billion Olympic baby:

“come and enjoy what will be the most exciting time in British history.”

Guido is looking forward to catching up with all the “excitement” after a month at the Maison Secondaire.

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…

Along with Alastair Campbell’s partner Fiona Millar, Francis Gilbert is the co-founder of the Local Schools Network – an anti academy front group set up to try to derail school reform. Paul Goodman over at ConservativeHome is a real fan. This morning Gilbert took to BBC Breakfast in a last ditch effort to talk down the Free School project that is seeing the first batch opening their doors this week:

FG: You’ll get a certain type of middle class parent putting their child into this school and then the local state school will take the more socially deprived pupils who don’t have the savvy parents. So you get this kind of segregation which  has led to things like the London riots in our schools already…

BBC: Let me just stop you there. You’re saying segregation in education in London schools led to the London riots..?

FG: It contributed a certain factor because you’ve got the poorest students concentrated in a quarter of our schools in this country and that’s a real problem. So we really need to solve that by bringing all our children together and this free schools programme will contribute more to this social segregation.

No doubt he is fully signed up to the non-reality based community theory that the riots were caused by teenagers having their Educational Maintainence Allowance cut…