Neo-Guido has been doing the rounds of broadcasters trying to bring harmony where there is discord:

He is on Sky News shortly with Ken Livingstone’s former race adviser and rabble rouser, Lee Jasper, at 17.30.

https://twitter.com/#!/LeeJasper/status/154931081060159488

We have previous…

Diane Abbott in 2010:

“The Labour Party should never get involved in the politics of racial division.”

During his pre-Christmas leadership wobble, Ed rushed out the news that Tim Livesey, a former senior adviser to the Archbishop of Canterbury, has been hired as his new Chief of Staff. Well what a first week he’s having! Yesterday there was Glasman, then the cack-handed response to Abbott this morning, and now Tom Baldwin’s latest strategy memo has been leaked, to much hilarity. Apparently Labour’s post-election recovery has been the best of any party in history. Quiet at the back.

Isn’t it amazing how it’s Sam Coates of The Times keeps getting Baldwin’s memos. They used to work together when Baldwin was the Times’ Chief Reporter. It’s almost as if Baldwin knows that a “leak” is more likely to be read over a press release. Straight out of the Democrat play-book…

UPDATE: Not a strategy, it is a lunchtime line to take. Baldwin would know.

https://twitter.com/#!/SamCoatesTimes/status/154954031750586368

Hungry? Fancy a rib-eye steak and hand-cut chips with béarnaise sauce served in the agreeable setting of a restaurant in an historic building on the riverside. Waited on by liveried waiters bringing silver service to white linen tables? It will cost our MPs a mere £7.80 and you’ll chip in £5.93 in subsidy for that lunch. We are all in it together.

If you are a vegetarian or dieting for the New Year perhaps you would like an artichoke and tomato salad drizzled with truffle dressing? Only £2.05 in the MPs’ dining room thanks to the £1.56 that minimum wage taxpayers have contributed to the MPs lunch in subsidy. The 646 MPs have their lunches subsidised to the tune of £8,823 each per annum.  Three years after the expenses scandal, MPs are still troughing at our expense…

“We disagree with Diane’s tweet. It is wrong to make sweeping generalisations about any race, creed, or culture. The Labour Party has always campaigned against such behaviour – and so has Diane Abbott.”

Time for an apology, or it won’t be the last comment they have to make about their Shadow Health Minister…

UPDATE: Firstly there was this:

And now this:

“I understand people have interpreted my comments as making generalisations about white people. I do not believe in doing that. I apologise for any offence caused.”

It comes as no surprise that Guido’s speculation that it was Ed on the phone turned out to be correct. It sounds like she has a gun to her head. Why did this take hours? Thought it was “taken out of context”? A  long morning…