Given the Yanks are in town to write about British politics, Guido thought he would turn his hand to the American presidential bid. Coincidently Republican front-runner Mitt Romney is also in London today to raise some cash from expats. He is trying to keep a low profile and avoid the media, though apparently he’s a little put out Dave is too busy to see him. Those McCain pictures still haunt some in Cameroon circles…

However  just because the visit is going under the radar doesn’t mean there hasn’t been any campaign fun and games. Romney was meant to be putting his cap around at the home of Sir Evelyn de Rothschild, but has been forced to move his fundraiser and other meetings to Dartmouth House in Mayfair instead.

It turns out Lady Rothschild is an extremely vocal supporter of Romney’s rival Jon Huntsman and has raised $1.2 million for him already. Apparently her position was made very clear…

Perhaps a coincidence that the Huntsman campaign poached Conyers Davies, CCHQ’s Head of Operations, at the end of last month…

UPDATE:

While Palin begs for a meeting, it seems Republican front-runner Mitt Romney has skipped straight to emulating Maggie:

Worked for her. Saatchi and Saatchi should send an invoice…

UPDATE: Ben Brogan points out that

Mitt Romney’s rip off of Margaret Thatcher’s famous 1979 “Labour isn’t working” poster is quite funny. But while the image is still striking, he seems to have missed the point: “Labour isn’t working” is a clever bit of wordplay. “Obama isn’t working” isn’t.

Vicky Pryce is nothing compared to Elisabeth Edwards in the scorned woman stakes. As Elisabeth lay dying from cancer she recorded a deathbed denunciation of her adulterous husband John Edwards, the Democratic vice-presidential running mate of John Kerry. Edwards diverted funds from his campaign to his mistress. America’s only paper worth reading, The National Inquirer, has the scoop:

…in a devastating act of ultimate revenge, a dying Elizabeth Ed­wards recorded a bombshell secret videotape for prosecutors – nailing her cheating husband John as he will stand trial on charges that could land him behind bars for 30 years.

That’s the stunning secret behind the federal indictment brought against the disgraced former presidential candi­date on June 3 -– following a two-year grand jury investigation into whether he illegally used campaign funds to cover up his affair with his then-pregnant mistress Rielle Hunter.

Serial adulterer Chris Huhne, like John Edwards, paraded his family at election time and also paid his mistress Carina Trimingham out of campaign funds when she worked on his leadership campaign. Vicky should take her lead from Elisabeth Edwards’ courage and thoroughly avenge her humiliation…

For a week the Washington press corp has been ignoring or down playing the most amusing story in politics, accepting instead at face value the implausible claims of a Democrat congressman. The story of congressman Weiner trying to send semi-naked pictures of himself to a young woman, specifically of his wiener, via the direct message function on Twitter, but accidentally instead sending the picture to the world, turned out to be completely true. He wasn’t hacked after all.

The footage of Congressman Weiner’s press conference has gone around the world, but there was a much more significant confrontation with the mainstream media just minutes before. Andrew Breitbart, the blogger who broke the story, was consequently derided by the established D.C. liberal media who decided to support the Democrat over the right-wing blogger. Once it became undeniably clear he was in fact right Breitbart seized the podium prior to the Congressman’s own presser and took on his detractors:

There’s a lesson there somewhere folks…

As the rolling news channels give the coalition the PR gift of hard-line union members booing what most people will see as perfectly sensible suggestions from Vince Cable, the union war has opened up on another front. Regular readers will be aware of Guido’s campaign against union officials that are paid for by the taxpayer, or “Pilgrims” as they are affectionately known. Having been raised in Parliament a number of times, not least at PMQs, it seems the campaign has spread to the other side of the pond.

The Washington Post reports that Rep. Phil Gingrey will attempt to push a bill through Congress to sharply limit the activity which blights US politics too. The Republican from Georgia sums up the issue nicely:

“Official time is not fair to the government or the taxpayer and works solely to the benefit of labor unions and employees who serve as its representative or steward. With an extraordinary amount of federal employees authorized to use 100% official time on behalf of their union, the federal government loses the immensely valuable civil service for which he or she was originally hired to perform. Additionally, taxpayers pay for absolutely no official productivity on their own behalf while federal employees use official time.”

Quite, though Guido isn’t sure the “Pilgrim” name will catch on over there.

Howard Dean warns that Sarah Palin could beat Barack Obama…

“Whoever the Republicans nominate, including people like Sarah Palin, whom the inside-the-Beltway crowd dismisses — my view is if you get the nomination of a major party, you can win the presidency, I don’t care what people write about you inside the Beltway.”

Former Democratic Vice-President nominee, and utter sleaze-ball, John Edwards has been formally charged with six counts over the cover-up he instigated about his affair with a campaign staffer. While his wife was dying of cancer, Edwards used funds raised for his abortive bid against Obama and Hillary in 2007/08 to silence his lover. Guess which British wannabe party leader made payments to his mistress and former campaign staffer…

Well at least he didn’t open his mouth.

Photo via Anushka Asthana

The B-team of Miliband, Harman, Alexander and Stewart Wood got their photo op with Obama at the palace yesterday. Only Nick Clegg managed to look more like an excited child meeting Santa. But that hasn’t stopped Gordon’s old pollster bigging things up:

@EdMPress Great mirroring body language! Obama must really want to please Ed!—
Deborah Mattinson (@debmattinson) May 25, 2011

Presumably Obama will be copying the vacant stare thing, the nasel tone and the lisp next?

Rumours that Ed had been allowed to come and serve up at the Downing Street BBQ turned out to be wide at the mark.

Apparently Sam and Michelle did the salad and the boys did the burgers and ribs…

Somewhat cringeworthily…