The latest YouGov polling [pdf] on the London mayoral voting intentions shows Boris leads Ken 44% to 41% amongst the “C2DE” working class voters, even though Labour has a 12% lead nationally amongst the same group of voters in a general election. Ken is clearly the Islington Guardianista candidate…

Downing Street should be worried – the failure to attract working class voters stopped Dave from winning last year. On these numbers Boris could have done it…

Now that the “Brotherly Leader and Guide of the Revolution of Libya”, or “Guide of the First of September Great Revolution of the Socialist People’s Libyan Arab Jamahiriya” is going the same way all socialist dictators go – mad and bad – Gaddafi must be feeling the pressure.

Galyna Kolotnytska is Muammar Gaddafi’s voluptuous blonde Ukrainian nurse, mentioned in a WikiLeaks cable from 2009. Apparently Gaddafi never travels without her and who could blame him. Wonder why… “Nurse!”

We have a copy of Heather Brooke’s The Silent State: Secrets, Surveillance and the Myth of British Democracy to give away to a co-conspirator who comes up with an amusing caption.  Heather was the campaigner who went to court to get MPs expenses released under the Freedom of Information Act. Without her crooked MPs would still be pontificating in parliament instead of doing porridge. Usual rules apply.

Peter Hain had a shocker on Question Time, being jeered and booed by the audience for his take on Britain selling arms to Libya:

If we found, as we did in some instances that they were not being used for the license they had been granted for… If that’s the case, then it was wrong to sell them and we wouldn’t do it again…

Which would of course be too late…

Hain’s ministerial record on arms dealing is far from squeaky clean:

Peter Hain, the Foreign Office minister with responsibility for Africa, yesterday told The Independent on Sunday that the Government would investigate the deal if any substantiated allegations were made… “nobody could object to Britain selling arms to South Africa”.

On the BBC’s Today programme ….

…the Foreign Office minister Peter Hain gave his personal assurance that new Labour had never sold arms to any government that used them for internal repression. At last month’s Farnborough arms fair, weapons and all manner of war equipment were on offer to Pakistan, Indonesia, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Turkey…

The Campaign Against the Arms Trade said: “The public were outraged and shocked in the role the UK had in being a major supplier of arms to countries like Indonesia. The fact that the government finally brought in an embargo given the atrocities in East Timor just recently shows that the public has become very concerned about where we are selling arms too.” However, Foreign Office Minister Peter Hain insisted the government had acted ethically and openly in its arms sales policy.

His conversion to the cause of peace seems to coincide with him being out of office…

Ed Balls’ admirers describe him as “combative”, others say he is an unpleasant, duplicitous, lying bully. Whatever your view there is no doubt that he turned a nominally safe seat into an ultra-marginal after an election campaign that focused on his merits and personality.

Unfortunately for Balls as a result he now has to spend weekend after weekend working his constituency, knocking on doors to try and bolster his support. Balls is only too aware that his poor performance in his constituency undermines his authority in the Labour Party. Yet no matter how much he smiles and glad hands his true personality still comes out. Balls admits to damaging his old constituency office and leaving it in a mess, he has offered to pay some £500 towards making the mess good. The local businessman who was his landlord says the damages are nearer £2,000.

If Balls had any sense he would negotiate a compromise, why get into an embarrassing court case with a local businessmen with all the inevitable bad publicity in the local press (pictured)? Instead, because of his “combative” nature he has ended up in court fighting Mr Sampson who says “It is nothing personal to do with him, I’m not being malicious, it is purely business”. With Balls it is always personal…

Cameron’s profound reply when asked what he’d like to say to Gaddafi.