Alastair Campbell once said you have eleven days to kill a story or you’re toast. The sustained effort to keep the Coulson story going might just be enough to push it over that mythical cut off point. The Indy’s Ian Birrell is a name floating around as a replacement. He was in the running to be Dave’s official spokesman and is known to be close to the PM. However, word reaches Guido, from usually reliable sources, that George Pascoe Watson – the former Sun man, now spinning at Portland PR, is sought after by some in Downing Street, potentially replacing one former Murdoch man with another. The problem is he is currently on over twice what the PM earns, so CCHQ might have to supplement the difference…

It was often said that Coulson was merely on loan from News International. What would he do if he did return to the fold? There would be a certain irony if he were dispatched across the Atlantic to oversee the Murdoch assault on the New York Times…

Officially there is no vacancy. Officially Andy Coulson has the full support of the PM and the government machine. Officially he isn’t going anywhere. Unofficially last night was quite the flurry of activity.

He may not be going anywhere just yet, but the longer the BBC, Guardian and the Labour Party keep screaming, the more they wound Coulson as he becomes the story. The damage  is not just jeopardising his current job, but any future high earners he could move on to. So the feelers are going out and seem to centre on three key names…

There may not be an official vacancy, but that isn’t stopping Boris’s spinner and former BBC man Guto Harri putting his ear to the ground. he had been rumoured to be in talks with Welsh language channel S4C about their vacant CEO position, Guido hears that Welsh speaking Harri told them that if Coulson’s job became available he wouldn’t be in the running for the channel no one watches. Though some are worried where that would leave Boris with a re-election battle looming.

Another BBC man, James Lansdale, is also said to have given a nod of the head. This Old Etonian would slip easily into the Cameron circle and is greatly respected by his colleagues. Not that there is a vacancy of course.

Another name in the fray is, as ever, Ben Brogan. His Cameroon contacts are exemplary and second to none. Interestingly Mandrake, in Brogan’s own paper, was keen to keep him out of the runners and riders suggesting instead that Buckingham Palace’s Simon Walker is in the offing rather than their Deputy Editor. They also suggest George Pascoe-Watson, who is by all accounts happy with his new well-rewarded gig at Portland. Guido’s money is still on Coulson.

Eric Pickles is busy explaining the practical business reasons why the Audit Commission is being killed off. Undoubtedly the organisation had, under New Labour, long ago moved on from being austere bean counters to doing politicallycorrect box ticking exercises, costing unnecessary millions. That is when they weren’t treating themselves to massages or a day at the races at our expense…

Guido suspects that the decisive moment when the fate of the Audit Commission was sealed was before the election when it became public that £56,000 had been paid to spin-merchants Connect Public Affairs to advise them on how to save their overpaid jobs. Connect recommended an expensive

“strong local lobbying response in order to mitigate and combat the activities of Eric Pickles”

Suicide by spin…

Looking down Connect’s list of mainly public sector and trade union clients it provides a handy guide to organisations that are clearly finding it difficult to justify themselves on their own merits, so instead they throw thousands of pounds of taxpayers’ money at spin merchants to do it for them. Quite a few more targets on that list merit defunding by the taxpayer…

In the run up to the General Election the Central Office of Information spent over £300m on government propaganda. They managed to leave global advertising giants Procter & Gamble for dust with their near un-restrained, publicly funded, spending blitz. The COI was being used by the outgoing government for political means, the closer the election got the more money it spent. So todays news that the COI has halved its monthly budget since May is certainly welcome, but don’t forget this is still a ridiculous amount of money for the state to be spending on promoting itself.

When Guido first read that 287 jobs were being cut at the COI he presumed the whole department was being scrapped, but that is a mere dent. The bloated machine operation will be slimmed down to just, er, 450 spin merchants.The “Big Society” public are being asked to run the country, can they not be trusted to make their own minds up about government projects and operations?

Guido is a little puzzled. Everytime he reads something about the Treasury Select Committee, it seems to be proceeded by the words “Tory dominated”:

Take this example from the Guardian, or this one from Progress, or from The Mail. Now take a look at the make up of the Treasury Select Committee:

Andrew Tyrie
(non-voting, chairman)

Michael Fallon
Andrea Leadsom
Jesse Norman
David Rutley
Mark Garnier

Andy Love
John Mann
George Mudie
Chuka Umunna
John Cryer

John Thurso

Stewart Hosie

Can the old hacks not add up, or are they deliberately not mentioning that far from dominating, the Tories are outnumbered?

While the “front-line services” of the NHS may well be protected from the axe, it seems the Department of Health’s bloated “first-line of defence” could be ripe for a squeeze. Why exactly does Andrew Lansley and his ministers require more press officers and PR civil servants than the Prime Minister and Cabinet Office?

The list – 31 in total – range from a 10 strong news-desk, to strategic planners and multiple layers of spin. The Department has four full-time speech-writers – could some of the other 27 spinners not yell down the phone and occasionally type? Lansley has had his accident prone days and is known to put his foot in it, yet his old media team used to fit in the back of a transit van, but he still made it to government.

When other departments are slashing the public services they provide, having that many media-manipulators clucking around in the ring-fenced pen is absurd.

Spotted by Liam Murray.

Having sworn blind that Lord Rennard was not involved in the Liberal Democrat campaign, Cowley Street looks a little silly this morning given The Sun’s dossier scoop. In a blunder, Clegg’s spinner John Sharkey’s notes on debate rehearsals – including how Clegg is being coached to imitate, yet slam, David Cameron, were left in the back of a cab.

Lord Rennard’s role in manifesto planning and organisation is referenced and amusingly, true to form, he was keen on involving token women. Less funny is the fact that Cowley Street staffer Phil Reilly lied to Guido.  Yesterday he said categorically Rennard was in no way involved in Clegg’s campaign. Does he now want to retract that and apologise for lying to Guido?

Despite turning his back on the Tories and slamming Dave in the leadership election, suggesting that the combination of “Eton, hunting, shooting and lunch at Whites” made him the wrong man for the job, the embattled Speaker has resorted to plastering images of his old leader all over his election material. He also uses Tory fonts. What would Sally say?

Worse than that though is the blatant spin about his expenses. “In the latest available figures, only 7 MPs claimed less in expenses than John.” While that may well be true for the last quarter, Bercow has been living at the taxpayers additional expense in the Speaker’s  plush grace and favour pad in the Palace of Westminster, which begs the question, why is he claiming anything at all?

And lest we forget, in all the years running up to the current set of figures Bercow has fluctuated between the rank of 1st and 3rd on the troughing scale.

Liam Byrne, or Baldamort to his friends, has had a bad week. Rule one of spinning for the Treasury is never to give definitive answers on anything. He made an claim on the Daily Politics last week that neither VAT or any other tax would need to rise in a Labour fourth term, he is now spectacularly rowing back. Having overstepped the mark in his role as the Treasury’s election attack dog, he is now firmly back in his box wittering about the Chancellor reserving the right to make the decisions.

Let’s hope his staff were on hand to bring him a soothing cappuccino…

Bad Al Campbell is briefing that the Sun’s endorsement is nothing.  When he was really a player in the game, he used to think differently, take this extract from his diaries:

Monday, March 17, 1997
… As soon as TB finished the Q & A session I took him to one side and said I had some good news. I said you remember in 1994 when I said we should try to get the Sun on board and you said you weren’t sure it was possible, well, they are. He thought it was good news in its own right, but was good in the effect it would have on the other side’s morale. I tipped off Mike Brunson at ITN. On one level, it was ridiculous that it should be seen as a big event, but the reality is that is exactly how it is seen. I felt it was a fruit of three years’ hard work, and there will be many more.

If you read his book, “The Blair Years“, Alastair boasts of lying, of spinning in his own words “bollocks”. It was he who sent David Kelly and thousands more to their deaths on the basis of a dossier of lies.  Labour circles are currently alive to the rumour that Bad Al is negotiating the terms on which he will return to help Mandelson in Downing Street.  Alastair himself is spinning, as if he understands, that the internet changes everything.  Mandelson told Paxman last night that The Sun doesn’t matter because of blogs and Twitter, as if they are some 140 character placebo for democracy. Yes, the internet.  Come on down Alastair, come spin on the web.  Emperor of dirt, we will make you hurt…