Guido spent the first half of the week in the Tory conference bubble of Manchester. Finally it was time for Guido to set the policy agenda too. The campaign against taxpayer funded trade union officials was picked up by Eric Pickles and Francis Maude, with their announcements that the practice is set to be quashed. Guido found a use for the savings too.

Conference was topped and tailed with some Scottish news.  Guido pushed the revelationsthat the Scottish Tories’ top spinner Ramsey Jones had attended, in spite of the rules, a campaign meeting for one of the candidates to lead the party north of the border. By the close of conference Jones had been suspended. 

There was plenty of gossip from Manchester including the bad BBC lobbyist, Cameron involved in a hotel escort scandal, a mystery speech writer revealed – as well as a lot of cat puns. We also did our part in giving Dave jokes for his speech. We also broke the news of No. 10 changes. You read it all on the blog first.