Labour’s rent-a-quote queen Lisa Nandy knows all about slagging someone else off in the papers without engaging her brain first. Guido’s favourite time was when she had a go at the Prime Minister for having a personal photographer, yet had charged the taxpayer for the very same thing just days before. Well surprise surprise, Lisa’s done it again…

In this morning’s reheated hatchet against Gove in the Guardian, Nandy is quoted as saying:

“This is definitive proof that this was a way of diverting taxpayers’ money to pay for a political agenda, at a time when the government was making huge spending cuts. Just shortly after that grant was announced they cancelled Building Schools for the Future – it’s pretty shocking.”

But should she really be shocked at at the cash being handed out without tender? When the story was run for the first time back in October 2010 David Bell, the Department for Education’s Permanent Secretary, replied to Andy Burnham’s complaint with a long list of the grants given out by Labour without tender. It included £107,000 handed out to the Children’s Society. Nandy was less outraged by this particular grant, given that she worked there at the time…