The Guardian has been passed the idiot notes or “Top Lines” prepared by Labour officials for the Labour leadership attending Wednesday’s local election campaign launch, including Blair, Brown and Prescott to spin to the media. At the event in the end they did not risk media questions. The two journalists say they got it from Brown’s people – Guido applauds Oliver King and David Hencke for saying that, something the more lickspittle lobby journalists should do rather than lazily “protecting their sources”. That phrase usually means the journalist is effectively an unpaid spinner for one faction or another.

King & Hencke focus on the arrogance of the Labour attitude to the police investigation – basically the bottom line of the Top Lines is “they can’t touch us”. We’ll see about that, Guido thinks Yates of the Yard is made of the right stuff, he won’t be spun like a hack.

Something missed in the King & Hencke report was a blatant lie in the briefing –To this day Labour has not revealed who provided the millions of pounds to finance the “blind” trusts operated by Blair, Brown, Prescott and Beckett during the late 90s. As we have seen with the expose of Levy‘s more recent Downing Street funding operation, the real big money comes via extra-party routes. The Labour Party revealed donations above £5,000 that went directly into the party coffers, but not who gave the many millions that financed the New Labour machine in its earliest days. We can easily guess which of the 292 peers Blair has created where donors, but why should we? Why doesn’t Labour fully declare all the people who who gave donations to the secret trusts?