The hand of the FT’s Christopher Cook can once again be felt in story that the Tories will find rather unhelpful. The disgruntled former Tory adviser has lifted the lid on life working next to Boris’s old parliamentary office. Paul Waugh has got hold of extracts of Cook speaking to Sonia Purnell for a her new “Just Boris” biography:

“Boris and I got on because we have similar dislike of most members of the Conservative party,’ explains Chris Cook – one of David Willetts’ aides, also based in the annexe room. ‘He’s clearly not on the right wing, but actually quite Europhile in Tory terms. He liked to come into our office to gossip and bitch about the right-wingers, particularly Liam Fox, or indeed anyone else he thought had screwed up the party that week.”

Then, coincidently, there are some rather more colourful descriptions of what Boris used to moot as ideas for his Telegraph column. In 2006 he suggested opening one with:

‘One thing that has become apparent to me in my years of Parliamentary service is that David Cameron is a complete c**t’.

Vero nihil verius!