Bruiser Vernon Coaker is one of Balls’s closest allies. With all the fixing skills of, and a quite remarkable similarity to a provincial night club owner, he’s got his boy’s back. So Guido had to laugh when stiched on to Allegra Stratton’s “RIP BS” piece was this snippet:

“Much has been made of how the Labour party’s two Eds are now sharing offices. But Ed Balls has kept a little chillout room next to the office of his friend and ally Vernon Coaker. It is, say friends, where he retreats when sharing with his clean-cut boss all gets too much for him.”

Skulking around with a select band of tight loyalists, plotting and brooding about not being leader. You’d could never guess who he learnt the trade from.

Guido will have something for them to chew over later today…