Back in 2009 the Prime Mentalist gave a glowing endorsement for a newly set-up financial think tank called the International Centre for Financial Regulation:

“As the international community moves from crisis management to longer-term reform, The International Centre for Financial Regulation will help governments, regulators and firms across the world to learn from recent experiences and build a stronger global regulatory framework.”

Gordon was so impressed they were given millions in government grants. Fast forward five years and today one Charles Taylor, chief operating officer of the International Centre for Financial Regulation, appears in court charged with defrauding the think tank out of £589.705.45. And to top it all it’s gone bust as well…

• Office of Gordon and Sarah Brown has £10,000-a-week expenses
• Not a registered charity, two thirds of funds raised spent on expenses
• Less than  £1 million given to charity out of over £3 million raised
• Vanity project lets  Gordon and Sarah enjoy jet-set premier life-style of first class flights and five star hotels

Gordon Brown has since leaving Downing Street raised over £3 million to support charitable projects yet has given less than a £1 million to charity. Nearly three-quarters of the money raised has gone on his office and globe-trotting travel expenses that run at over £10,000-a-week – allowing Brown to vainly swan around in Davos like old times. Gordon Brown always insists that he does not profit from the arrangement and that all the income goes either directly to charities or to support other charitable public service projects.

The Office of Gordon and Sarah Brown is not a registered charity, it is a private limited company. Guido’s investigation reveals – by piecing together some 133 declarations made in Gordon Brown’s parliamentary register of interests – a picture of the until now private accounts since the company was set up by Sarah. Brown has declared to parliament that the total amount paid to the company since 2010 is £3,605,197. According to a recent announcement on the company’s website, only £912,702 has so far been given to charity after three years. Leaving over £2 million to be accounted for when according to the latest available records the company had only £160,978 in cash at the bank. You can see an itemised spreadsheet compiled from Guido’s investigations here.

The company admits it budgets £550,000-a-year for expenses to meet salaries, accommodation costs and staff expenses. Gordon can be paid as much as $100,000 for a single speech in America to investors at finance conferences. By funnelling his speaker fees through the company he does not have to pay tax on the income, even though it covers the £10,000-a-week expenses for Gordon and Sarah to maintain the jet-set premier lifestyle they were accustomed to when in Downing Street, travelling first class around the world and staying in top five star hotels attended to by flunkies. Something Gordon would not be able to do on his backbench MP’s salary…

The silent Shadow Chancellor is still keeping quiet despite some heavy briefing against him from colleagues at the weekend. One Labour MP told the Mail:

“Balls used to throw his weight around in Shadow Cabinet meetings and ignore Ed Miliband when he spoke. Now Balls is totally out of sorts. He doesn’t say much at Shadow Cabinet meetings and when he does, he is the one who is ignored. He has lost his mojo.”

Silence yesterday as well. So where was he? Hidden away at a very safe distance up in Scotland bravely knocking on doors with his old boss Gordon Brown, it turns out:

https://twitter.com/redhotraggle/status/425336089713598464

Anyone would think he was cursed…

The consensus of broadsheet pundits is that Ed has, with his cost-of-living crisis line that prices are rising faster than wages, nimbly and cleverly switched from a losing argument on the economy to a winning “retail offer”. Guido thinks this successfully plays into the British national psyche; grumbling about both the weather and the cost of things rising. However as the economy rises unemployment falls and earnings will caeteris paribus begin to outstrip inflation as sure as the sun rises. The ONS data shows this is about to happen…

Guido is beginning to worry that Miliband, like his former mentor Gordon Brown, hasn’t really got a strategy. The whole “too far, too fast” thing was bound to end in tears unless there was a permanent recession. As it happened the predictions by Ed Balls of a triple-dip turned out to be über-pessimistic, statisticians say there wasn’t even a double-dip. The only recession the UK suffered originated under Gordon Brown.

The energy cost argument still generates headlines, however international comparisons show that UK energy costs are middle of the league table for Europe – though US fracking and shale gas means their energy costs are way below ours. Fracking however is opposed by Ed Miliband.

What then? Having lost the argument on debt and the economy, followed – food banks notwithstanding – by the cost-of-living crisis evaporating, Labour will have to change tack again. Labour can’t fight on economic competence, because so contaminated is Ed Balls that he even loses to George Osborne. Labour are blamed for the economic mess and are suspected by the voters of still being untrustworthy on dealing with the deficit and debts. They would be unwise to fight on leadership; “weak and weird” Ed versus “posh and out of touch” Dave is not a great prospect for Labour.

Guido’s guess is they will try to have it both ways, partially accept the coalition’s spending envelope and pretend they can tax their way to prosperity. A policy Miliband’s socialist frère Hollande has now abandoned. All the chatter (spun by his adviser Stewart Wood) about Ed’s plans for “big changes in our economy” – a strategy based on East Coast academic theories from Harvard professors on new “Varieties of Capitalism” – will have Lynton Crosby crying with laughter into his (Australian) Chardonnay. Doesn’t mean Miliband isn’t going to try it…

UPDATE: The FT has surveyed economists and they mostly think households will start to feel better off – this is after consumer confidence surged 20% in 2013. Well spotted economists…

“I” x 12.

“My” x 4.

“Me” x 2.

“Nelson Mandela” x 13.

Total: Gordon 18, Mandela 13.

More bad news for Labour’s Enfield North candidate, expenses trougher Joan Ryan. Just this month the former Labour whip was bragging to voters about her spotless record on Enfield’s Chase Farm Hospital when she was their MP, before she was kicked out following the expenses scandal.

“As your MP I worked alongside the local community, health professionals, patients’ representatives and my fellow Labour colleagues for 13 years to keep Chase Farm maternity services and a blue-light Accident and Emergency department.”

Well that’s not what the minutes of her November 2009 Downing Street meeting with the former Prime Mentalist to discuss Chase Farm say. According to Gordon’s records, Joan didn’t sound too bothered about standing up for the hospital. They report:

“she was tempted to bow to the inevitable. Although she did not want to concede on the clinical arguments, she accepted that we had to move on.”

Who would have thought an ex-MP with a history of creaming her constituents would not be entirely honest with them?