Gordon’s ongoing quest for a sprinkling of stardust from Obama has hit yet another obstacle.  Firstly he was forced live on Marr to admit that he hadn’t spoken directly to Obama about the Christmas Day bombing attempt and now it seems Simon Lewis, Brown’s error-strewn official spokesman has sparked a serious falling out and public admonishment from the White House.

“A White House source” used an interesting choice of words to describe “a mistake” by Lewis to suggest that a file on the knicker-bomber, Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, had been passed to the US sometime “in 2008“. However Lewis has just had to retract his words and stated there was no suggestion that this had ever happened. Alan Johnson has been forced to schedule an emergency statement at 15.30. Sky News’s Joey Jones said he took no pleasure in describing it as “an awful briefing“. Another serious blunder by Brown’s slapdash spokesman, the Lobby have completely lost respect for Brown’s mouthpiece. A lobby hack who would prefer to anonymous say “it was an utter fucking car-crash”.

By the by, the Telegraph broke the story this morning.  Edited by Simon’s brother, Will Lewis…