Most of the non-financial Dead Tree Press has been so focused on the election that they haven’t noticed that Europe’s financial markets are in meltdown, the euro is plunging and a spectre is haunting Europe — the spectre of sovereign collapse. All the powers of old Euro have entered into a holy alliance to exorcise this spectre:
The latest down-payment for the euro-project is a €14.5 billion bail-out of Greece propped up by Germany, France, Italy, Spain and six other EU countries.  The German banking sector is thought to have a €34 billion exposure to Greece, panic has hit not just the euro, but the banks hitherto lauded by the likes of Will Hutton as paragons of financial rectitude so unlike the risk-taking City of London.

The German authorities are in panic and have banned short-selling in Allianz, Commerzbank, Deutsche Bank and Deutsche Postbank – the most blue chip of German banking pride – in a move which will surely see foreign investors sell their holdings it has already driven the euro to a four-year low overnight.  The euro project is built to fail without a unified fiscal and tax regime, sooner or late, as eurosceptics have predicted from the outset, the euro will be torn apart.

Euro politicians are now blaming speculators – a sure sign that they want to shoot the messenger – speculators are the harbingers of economic reality, not the creators.  The euro is at a four-year low for good economic reasons, not because traders are shorting it.

Britain is spared this financial contagion as it stands in splendid isolation from the European Central Bank.  Let us hear no more from europhiles on the laughable “stability” that joining the euro will bring.

Jon Cruddas says…

“I’ve known David Miliband for twenty years, I’ve known Ed Balls for twenty years, but I don’t know what they stand for.”

One down, four to go. I knew Cruddas would crack when I sent Chris Leslie round with the file. A little show and tell of CCTV footage and old Jon soon looked into his heart and realised he didn’t want to stand after all. That little girl Burnham is next.

Sick to the back teeth of creeping around the brain-dead lobby fodder the PLP have been left with. After having to listen to Harman drone on all day the last thing you want to do is spend the night pressing the flesh in the Strangers bar with that lot. Not sure how many nights I can keep it up – nobody bought me a beer.

To make matters worse got home, sans ministerial car, what do I get? No dinner and that four-eyed prick Crick on Newsnight claiming that I might not be able to get enough signatures for my nomination. What the hell does he know? It’s not like anyone has ever answered the phone to him. That f****r has been on my case for too long.

On the up side, I did grease up to Bercow and he was re-elected, worth it to get that drunk he married to back me on Twitter. Had lunch with Stan Greenberg, he said he has a plan for tacking to the left now Cruddas is out of the way, though he’s got some explaining to do after telling me it would be a breeze in Morley.

The big announcement is planned for tomorrow.  I will be leader.

(*As leaked to Guido)

As the rush for seats, desks and bag-carriers makes way for the start of a new school term, spare a moment for one newbie MP who doesn’t seem too fussed about being sworn in to her recently won office or taking part in her ancient constitutional duty to elect the Speaker.

Chi Onwurah, Labour’s Newcastle newbie, asked at a meeting of the new MPs last week whether attendance today was strictly compulsory as she already had somewhere better to be. It turns out she had been asked to call the bingo numbers in her constituency.

Clearly the Commons was not quite the House she had in mind…

Further to Guido’s revelations that the new Defra Secretary of State Caroline Spelman is tied up with the bio-tech/agri-business lobbying company “Spelman, Cormack & Associates”, that she co-founded with her husband Mark, Farmers Weekly have unravelled more decisions Spelman must recuse herself from:

“Mark Spelman is a managing director at Accenture, the firm that developed the online system that delivers subsidy payments to farmers. The Rural Payments Agency (RPA) awarded Accenture a £35m seven-year contract to develop new and more efficient systems in 2003. Accenture was appointed to develop and deliver the new system over two years and then provide ongoing support for the remaining five years.”

The disastrous Accenture deal that ended up costing £350 million is due to expire this year. Guess who is in charge of deciding if it is renewed?

UPDATE : With inflation so high surely any thought of hiking VAT, which is inflationary, has to be discarded…