A little birdy just told Guido the unlikely tale that his old sparring partner Tom Watson is opening a gym in his constituency tonight. Hopefully witnesses (or even avid blog reader Tom himself) will be able to provide another Kodak moment.

It is not clear at this point whether Watson will be taking up membership…

Guido was somewhat surprised to hear high praise coming from his old sparring partner Tom Watson of all people. During the Culture, Media and Sport Select Committee last week, Watson was quick to praise this blog and push an argument often put forward here: that diary editors are thieving magpies. The academic expert being grilled, Paul Bradshaw, Lecturer in Journalism, Birmingham City University even agreed:

O cruel, needless misunderstanding! O stubborn, self-willed exile from the loving breast! Two gin-scented tears trickled down the sides of his bearded face. But it was all right, everything was all right, the struggle was finished. He had won the victory over himself.  He loved Big Blogger.

Watson 2009, after Orwell 1948, as Smith in “1984″

Sort of jealous that Guido’s old sparring partner Tom Watson has reputedly trousered circa £50,000 from the combined damages he received from the Mail on Sunday and the Sun. Tax free as well, that will  more than make up for his loss of £400-a-month cash he claimed (no receipts necessary) in expenses for groceries. Guido put it to him earlier today and he did not deny it. Guido, alas, did Smeargate for pleasure…

Guido will be going through MP’s expenses at random today, amazingly Tom Watson’s expenses are the first randomly selected for detailed examination.  Fancy that, him looking just like a piggy and all…

So many rats are leaving the government ship it is in danger of toppling over.  Tom Watson, the Minister for Mudslinging*, who was named in the one of the Smeargate emails from McBride to Draper, will be particularly missed.  He is cherished by strategists at CCHQ.  If it wasn’t for him the Labour Party would not have swapped a triple-election winning political genius for a voter repelling, election avoiding, malevolent weirdo.  They should, if they could find enough scrap brass, put a statue of him outside the entrance to Tory HQ on Millbank.  Watson also saw off Stephen Carter, someone brought in from outside the Brown circle to bring a wider media savvy perspective, in doing so he probably killed the last hope of sanity in the Downing Street bunker.  Watson of course organised the coup which failed but fatally undermined Blair.  It is to Tom Watson who more thinking Tories toast for the tactical and strategic disasters that have plagued the Brown premiership.  On a personal note, Guido would like to pay tribute to Tom for his antics and attempts to struggle unsuccessfully against the Guidoisation of politics.  Watson will now have more time with his family and Play-Station, no doubt his blog will also improve with him out of government…

*Favourite read he says was Mudslingers: The Twenty-five Dirtiest Political Campaigns of All Time

There is a heck of a lot to round-up this morning.  So first a bit of light entertainment:

Tory MP James Gray, who Guido can confirm from previous behaviour is a complete shit, is exposed today by the News of the World “as a greedy skinflint after claiming for Remembrance Day wreaths on expenses.” Iain Dale calls James Gray “a class one copper bottomed shit… I feel sick to the stomach that an MP from the party I support could even contemplate claiming money for a wreath, let alone actually going ahead and doing it.” So bad news for the Tory Shadow Scottish Secretary David Mundell, who also claims for wreaths.  They are both pretty much unashamed that their tribute to those who made the ultimate sacrifice is to put in an expense claim.

Guido alluded to LibDem CEO Lord Rennard’s troughing ways yesterday, the News of the World has found out about his lying to the parliamentary authorities about his place of residence so he can trouser £41,678 tax free.  Guido will be returning to Lord Rennard in the near future.  His troughing dishonesty doesn’t end with this, nor does his personal morality bear much scrutiny.

The News of the Screws has a competition , the winner can live like an MP!

Caroline Flint is posing as a diva in a fashion spread in the Observer.  The hard-hitting interview asks “Will she ever be able to improve on her number seven ranking in the Most Fanciable MP list?”  No questions however about the former Housing Minister getting the taxpayer to pay her stamp duty tax.

The Times reports that Baroness Thornton, a Labour minister in the whips’ office, with a £1 million family house near Hampstead Heath claims up to £22,000 a year in expenses by saying that her mother’s modest bungalow in Yorkshire is her main home.

Hazel Blears flipped her main residence and told a different story to the tax man enabling her to avoid paying capital gains tax on the £45,000 profit she made out of taxpayers.

Tom Watson, the mendacious Minister for Mudslinging and Digital Engagement, claims almost £100 a week for food.  Together with fellow Minister Iain Wright, he has used parliamentary allowances to lavish more than £100,000 on their shared Central London home since the last General Election.  That is one gold-plated pig sty.

• Taxman probes second-home profits to see whether MPs have side-stepped capital gains
• Kitty Ussher claimed £20,000 for ‘bad taste’ Artex ceilings
• Sinn Fein MPs claim £310,000 expenses for rent on flats in properties all owned by one Irish landlord
• Stephen Byers claimed £125,000 for flat his partner owned
• Kevin Brennan had £450 TV delivered to family home
• MPs’ Expenses: ToTony Blair’s £296,000 mortgage on constituency home he bought for £30,000
• John Reid sent a bill for £199 pouffe and £29.99 glitter loo seat
• John Gummer claimed £36,000 for gardening and mole-hunting at his estate
• The Speaker’s scapegoat: Official who signed off MPs’ expenses didn’t even have accountancy qualification
• Millionaire Tory Greg Barker made £320,000 profit on flat funded by taxpayer
• Keith Vaz claimed £75,500 for a Westminster flat while family home is 12 miles from Commons
• ‘I’m just too honest’ says Phil Woolas who ‘claimed’ for women’s clothes
• Commons boss who called in police has four homes in three countries, including grace and favour mansion
• Millionairess Barbara Follett had own private police force (paid for by £25,000 of your money)
• Solicitor General Vera Baird claimed for Christmas trees
• Uniformed chauffeurs to football club for Michael Martin
• Care services minister claims £37,000 on furnishing tiny four-room flat
• ‘Police probe’ Minister Tony McNulty still defiant

Something to mull over; HMRC allows £5 per night subsistence deductions to taxpayers for overnight stays in the UK.  MPs voted themselves £20-a-day tax-free subsistence payments.  Why is the rule different for MPs?  Do they eat 300% more than the rest of us?

UPDATE : Talking of Tom Watson, after reading the above a co-conspirator emails;

The first time I met him, after many bottles of vino and hours of him talking to my tits, he started telling me all about his second home in London and that he and Siobhan were looking to buy another one in the capital. I was thinking she must be loaded, but now that I consider it in light of current events, I have my doubts.

He is of course (like all MPs) loaded, courtesy of the taxpayers.

Andy McSmith in the Indy has compiled a short list of McBride’s smears and their victims.  It is not a complete list, most of the victims listed are Labour MPs.  Shame that journalists didn’t have the courage to name McBride as the source of the smears at the time that they printed them.  If they did, it might have shed some light on the potential truth of those smears at the time.

Guido’s challenge to the fearless members of the press is a simple one.  Show you are not, in the words of Peter Oborne the ‘client media‘, check your notebooks and identify the smears passed to you by Tom Watson, the Minister for Mudslinging.  Are you copy-takers or journalists?   Or will you just leave it to Guido once again to do the hard work and dispatch him?

UPDATE : John Rentoul in the Indy has enough self awareness to  realise he is in a self-inflicted Kafkaesque situation. People are starting to hint; Matthew Taylor, the Blairite Downing Street insider turned wonk,  joins Guido in mocking the press;

I have had a few ‘phone calls from Sunday journalists about the McBride affair. ‘Can you tell us more about his operation?’ they say. Which, when you think about it, is a bit like someone saying:

‘me and my mates have for years been having a very intimate relationship with someone you might vaguely know – what was it like?’.

Er…you could start by asking each other

Newspapers writing indignant exposes about the briefing operation of someone upon whom they relied for years for stories! You couldn’t make it up.

Journalists can name the names, they are in their contacts books already.

Tom Watson, the Minister for Mudslinging, is blogging again.

Yes Tom, the time for making your farewells has been decreed.  Large glasses have been raised by Blairites…

UPDATE : Tom Watson not be attending the government’s big Digital Britain Summit today, he lies his excuse is that despite being the “Digital Engagement Minister” he only got his invite on Wednesday. You can’t hide for ever Tom.

The Smeargate story still has legs, though it has moved from the front-pages to the comment pages.   John Lloyd in the FT makes the point that the all party shift towards non-ideological, centrist politics means the personal becomes more political - “That view is a rational one, in a politico-media space as tuned to scandal and personality as the British one now is.”

The Sun editorialises against Tom Watson, the Downing Street Minister for Mudslinging,

THE stink of a cover-up hangs over Downing Street.

Cabinet Secretary Sir Gus O’Donnell rules out an inquiry into whether minister Tom Watson knew about the “Smeargate” emails. He says he is happy to accept the minister’s denials, and the case is closed. That might be good enough for Sir Gus. It isn’t for The Sun. How can we know the full facts without an investigation, which means examining ALL emails involved?

The Sun is gunning hard on this issue saying “Watson, McBride and Draper are the true face of today’s Labour Party: A party that has lost all decency, all sense of honour, all connection with the people it was elected to serve.”  Guido has a theory that Watson has swallowed Gordon Brown’s moral compass.

The Times say Whelan has to go. Well maybe he would go if we could find him. He has gone into hiding. Another public interest service from Guido.

It is still there.  Another post on the same day (now deleted) accused Guido of being “a silly little public-school toff who ran drugs parties and made a bob or two in the City” – never mind the fact that Tony McNulty went to the same grammar school as  Guido. “So Guido Fawkes claims that David Cameron attended raves, presumably the illegal sort. Well [he] should know. Isn’t it fitting that the disgusting site he runs is probably named after the pinnacle of his life’s achievement: The Sunrise rave (second Guy Fawkes edition) on the 4th November 1989.!”

Note that there is an almost puritanical streak in the attack; Guido did drugs and partied in his twenties, the parties were probably illegal.  Well it is hardly a secret that Guido has libertine as well as libertarian tendencies.  That is a feature, not a bug.  Cameron is the same age and probably equally as louche is the tenuous smear by association.

The day they launched their smear counter-attack incidentally was Guido’s fortieth birthday.  It was very irritating.