One important face was missing from the backstage ‘spin room’ at last Thursday leaders’ Question Time encounter: Ed Miliband’s controversial media henchman Tom Baldwin.

In the last year Baldwin has been criticised for comparing a tax row to the death of ‘Milly Dowler’, making a sick jibe about cancer to a journalist, using the term ‘weaponise’ about the NHS and finally, last Monday, blaming the Prime Minister for migrant deaths in the Med, triggering a huge political row.

Word reaches Guido that Miliband was furious with Baldwin’s bloody briefing and his spokesman declined the opportunity to comment when asked whether Ed would take his controversial spin king into Downing Street should he win on Thursday.

“When the spokesman needs a spokesman”, as the old saying goes…