Credit where credit is due: Chuka may not be so hot on polling, but he has ruined Vince Cable’s week. The Social Market Foundation website has a heavy trail for Cable’s speech tomorrow lunchtime on reforming executive pay. So heavy that you might wonder why such an announcement was not being made to Parliament first. Well now it will have to be, as Cable’s shadow has been granted an Urgent Question forcing the Business Secretary to bring the announcement forward to this afternoon and give it to the proper audience – parliament. There goes the grid…

More bad news for Boris today as a ComRes poll echoes last week’s YouGov offering that had Ken in the lead. The jubilation in Labour circles is on the up, but they obviously didn’t get the same lines Chuka was sent for his appearance on the Sunday Politics yesterday: “Polls go up and down… you’re obsessed with polls Andrew”. Heads in the sand…

It’s rare that a Labour MP actually coughs that their Twitter output is stage managed and censored by the party machine. Step forward gaffe-queen Dianne Abbott, who popped up on LBC this morning to talk about that tweet with Nick Ferrari:

NF: Does anyone have sight of [Tweets] within the Labour Party, does anyone like to see them before they go out, or do you have to run them past anybody?

DA: Oh sure, I mean I always check my tweets with my colleagues, and as I say this morning I tweeted on the very sad fact that the poorest people who need to have healthy diet are actually cutting their expenditure on fruit and vegetables.

NF: So who do you check that with, and that’s a very valid point, but who do you check that with?

DA: We have a system in the Labour Party for clearing this sort of thing.

NF: Oh. Was that bad one cleared then? …

DA: That, that was part of a conversation. …

NF: Ha ha, and just before I go so how does the clearance system work with the Labour Party?

DA: How it works is the Labour Party is very clear on the sorts of policies that you’re supposed to talk about for instance we’re not allowed to commit ourselves to reversing any particular cut, and that has been the position right from the beginning.

And there was Guido think Peter Hain’s inspired spin was heartfelt…

Yesterday’s capitalism bunfight sent the spin machines into overdrive. Guido was amused by these two…

What a  gracious and dignified man. Good on him for not playing down nearly sixty thousand pounds in secret payments… 

In a statement given to ConservativeHome Tory MEP Roger Helmer has confirmed Guido’s many stories about the “mexican stand-off” he is in with Warsi and CCHQ:

I have made it clear that I will not sign the formal resignation papers until the position is clarified and Rupert is confirmed. I was happy to resign in favour of the next-in-line in the normal way, but I am not prepared to stand aside for some A-List Cameron protégée from St. John’s Wood. However the Party says it will not call the panel and make the decision until I do resign. So we have a Mexican stand-off.

I think that both I and Rupert (and our respective families) are entitled to some certainty and resolution on the issue. Accordingly I have indicated to the Party Chairman that if the situation is not resolved within a few weeks, I shall withdraw my offer to resign. 

I have also made it clear to the Party Chairman that I believe that my obligations on this point have been fully and finally discharged by my offer, made in good faith, to resign. Accordingly, if I am obliged to stay in place until 2014, I shall feel no further sense of obligation or responsibility to the Party.

You read about his resignation, and the ensuing battle here, here and here first.

As Westminster gets back into gear and the first drinks parties of the year spill out onto pavements, it’s amazing who you bump into on the Embankment. Former stand-up comedienne Ayesha Hazarika and her new/old boss Harriet Harman weren’t very happy with Guido’s pre-Christmas report on Ayesha’s move out of Ed’s office and back to Harman’s. Ayesha made specific denials of allegations not even made…

Blog reader Harriet couldn’t seem to bring herself to fully engage, choosing instead to lob words in from the sneering sideline, without direct eye contact. “Poison” she declared. “Lies” she hissed. How ungrateful, not even a word of thanks for all our hard work with DUEMA…

Ayesha wanted Guido to know that she was still very much involved with Ed’s PMQs prep, and had even contributed jokes yesterday, not something you would have thought you would want to boast about on your CV. Alas the only place you can actually read her jokes is on Paul Waugh’s blog, as they didn’t quite make the cut for Hansard…

Mili-spinners are desperately clinging to the post-PMQs fallout over who was responsible for allowing train companies to increase fares so dramatically. Milband claimed that the government had reversed the cap on fares that Labour had conveniently introduced in an election year. However a document released by the Department of Transport blows that line out of the water. An agreement between the last government and a train company explicitly states that the  limits were only valid for one year:

In other words it was Miliband who was in the wrong when he wailed that the Prime Minister was incorrect in saying “the power to [raise fares] was given by the last Labour government”. Another re-launch week success!

UPDATE: Labour spinners are desperately trying to shoot this down as a “legal technicality”. Adonis has now rushed out a statement saying it was his “intention” to keep the cap forever, despite signing the above document. If that so, how come it was not mentioned in Labour’s manifesto? Even if that was the case, Miliband was still misleading the House by suggesting that Cameron had “reversed” anything.

Labour types are scraping the barrel this morning claiming that Newt Gingrich has “stolen” Ed’s much derided “predators” line. Tom Watson is crowing, Political Scrapbook are grandstanding and Guido is laughing. Ed isn’t even the first European leader to develop the theme. Rewind to 2007 and enter stage right French Presidential candidate Nicolas Sarkozy:

There are a lot of number floating around today regarding HS2. Tory spinners proudly say that the project will create 40,000 jobs. Given the woefully underestimated price tag is currently at £32 billion, it seems that the Tories have no problem with the taxpayer paying a cool £800,000 for each job. Given that the final cost is likely to be closer to £60 billion, the “expected” generation of £45 billion in “cash benefits for businesses around the country” looks equally shaky.

Add to that the extra half a billion for the new tunnel to avoid upsetting the NIMBYs, as well as helpfully staving off a rebellion in Parliament, and you have political spending of Brownite proportions.