UKIP spin chief Gawain Towler is stepping down after 13 years at the party. It is no exaggeration to say Gawain is one of the press officers most respected by political journalists over the last decade. Just think what he has had to deal with down the years – from gay floods to Godfrey Bloom to donkey rape and Henry Bolton – the Lobby knew their phone calls would always be answered with honesty and good humour. At many times he single-handedly kept the party together.

Gawain is setting up a reputation management consultancy named CWC, which stands for “Crisis, What Crisis?”, and prospective clients will be making a canny choice. God knows what UKIP are going to do without him – in many ways Gawain leaving really does signal the end of the party. MoG this evening?

“Dare to dream that the dawn is breaking on an independent United Kingdom.”

Guido is very hungover after last night’s Speccie bash. It was very hot and there was a lot of Pimms involved, also an inexplicable number of pretty models there…

Sadly no Miliband this year, instead it was Harman’s turn to pretend she wanted to be there. Osborne took a couple of hours off from preparing for the Budget while Michael Fallon was bullish about the jihadis. Liz Truss was flirty and Nicky Morgan wandered around looking for someone to talk to. Boris was banging on about some airport…

Most amusing was the PM’s drive by, where he immediately got locked into conversation with UKIP spin supremo Gawain Towler. Apparently Dave’s defence was that the smaller European nations are going to support his renegotiation plans. There are about four million reasons why that conversation looked painful. 

Despite the heat the PM’s old pal Steve Hilton got a proper hug, though the hippy chat was soon troubling Dave:

Blogging may be light…