One of the tasks of people working for Ed Miliband is spotting potential photos that could be twisted to portray him as Weird Ed. If the Labour leader was, say, at a Dickens literary festival, it would be the responsibility of an aide to ensure that his head didn’t block out the “-ens” in pictures. So imagine the dilemma observed by my snout when Mili was invited by his equalities spokeswoman, Sharon Hodgson, to shoot a few hoops in a game of wheelchair basketball on a makeshift court in the shadow of Big Ben. Ed Balls was only too happy to play but Mili’s point guard, Anna Yearley, declined on her master’s behalf after Hodgson spotted the pair strolling by. Fearing a future dig from Private Eye, perhaps mocking Mili for sitting down on the job, Operation Cotton Wool takes no risks with the porcelain figurine.
The self-styled patriot Nigel Farage is a fan of rugger and cricket rather than the round ball game, as his private school ilk are prone to dismiss association football. Yet he may be suffering palpitations over the chances of England meeting Germany in the semi-final of the World Cup in Brazil. It is unlikely, but an England-Germany clash is enough to bring Ukip’s anti-migrant John Bull out in a cold sweat. Farage’s German wife, Kirsten, has in the past draped the black, red and gold tricolour of her native country over the fence of the family home when the two nations played. Tory right-wingers snigger that Farage wouldn’t want his household to fail Norman Tebbit’s cricket test.
I hear that the Lib Dem minister Tom Brake, the deputy leader of the Commons, informed the Association of Professional Political Consultants that he is minded to require lawyers to enrol on the fledgling register of lobbyists. Oh, to be a fly on the wall when Nick Clegg pops home to inform Miriam González Durántez, the head of the EU wing of the international corporate law firm Dechert and also Mrs Clegg, that she must sign up. Will there be a special section for pillow talk?
The Labour frontbencher Stephen Pound has turned Ealing North into a safe seat and bucked the trend in 2010 by winning more than half the votes cast with one of the few swings to Labour. Yet he wondered aloud if somebody thought he’d overstayed his welcome when he received an invitation to purchase copies of Who Was Who. Sound-as-a-Pound informed the publisher that he intends to stand again.
The word is that Kevin Barron, the chair of the Low Standards Committee, harbours ambitions to succeed Malcolm Rifkind at the No Intelligence Committee after the election. I suppose that their interests – sleazebags and spooks – have criminality in common.
Kevin Maguire is the associate editor (politics) of the Daily Mirror
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