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/li> 17 comments A sense of humour can be a dangerous thing, David Cameron learned after teasing hacks on board his plane during his North Africa tour. Rebuking one paper for claiming the SAS faced the chop, he said: ‘It’s total rot. I suppose tomorrow there’ll be a headline Red Arrows To Be Scrapped and the day after, Trooping The Colour Abandoned.’ Sure enough, when he landed in the UK yesterday, one front page screamed: Red Arrows Face Axe. Sighed Dave: ‘I don’t know whether to laugh or cry.’ Dismayed: David Cameron's joke about the Red Arrows backfired, leaving him not knowing whether to laugh or cry *********************************************************************************************** Would-be Prime Minister Adam Afriyie, exposed for plotting to succeed David Cameron, is not the first Windsor Tory MP to be caught out by this newspaper. Ten years ago, his predecessor Michael Trend was forced to quit after we revealed how he fiddled £90,000 exp

/li> 6 comments MP Mike Freer is at loggerheads with Hendon¿s Matthew Offord over gay marriage plans Two neighbouring North London Tory MPs have not spoken to each other for more than a year in a simmering feud over gay marriage. Finchley’s Mike Freer, who spoke emotionally in favour of the move in the Commons this week, citing his love for his male partner, is at loggerheads with Hendon’s Matthew Offord – a staunch opponent. Freer curtly refused to let Offord interrupt his speech – and when Offord  did stand to speak, he likened same-sex matrimony to ‘polygamy’. The pair used  to be friends – now they need mediation.   Sports Minister Hugh Robertson – happily married to wife Anna for ten years – is being ribbed by unreconstructed Conservative colleagues over his unenviable job of steering the same-sex marriage Bill on to the statute book. Says a friend: ‘The next MP to bowl up to him and shout, “Hello, Duckie” in a high, camp voice will probably get a thump.’   Uns

/li> 1 comments Ex-Labour Cabinet Minister James Purnell is the BBC's new £300,000-a-year strategy chief Will ex-Labour Cabinet Minister James Purnell improve Auntie’s standards as the BBC’s new £300,000-a-year strategy chief? As an MP he was embroiled in a fake-photos scandal when his image was crudely inserted into a publicity shot after he turned up late to an event. Purnell claimed it was all a misunderstanding – but MPs who featured alongside him said they had discussed how the picture would be doctored. Weeks earlier, he had accused broadcasters of ‘forfeiting public trust’ with scandals over doctored footage and faked competitions.   There were embarrassed groans when Tory chairman Grant Shapps issued a rallying cry to MPs to join the election trail in Eastleigh, where disgraced Lib Dem Chris Huhne was forced to resign. ‘Unlike its former MP, our excellent candidate Maria Hutchings does not tell lies about herself or anyone else!’ yapped Shapps. Is this

/li> 0 shares 22 comments As UKIP’s vote appears to be surging in the Eastleigh by-election, party leader Nigel Farage is trying every trick to maximise his advantage.  He has co-written a pop song, bizarrely based on one of his speeches to the European Parliament, and performed by a Portuguese rock outfit called ‘JOE x Ppl’ of all things. The dirge-like riff, released tomorrow, turns a Farage rant about the financial crisis into ‘music’.   At the Eastleigh by-election: UKIP Leader Nigel Farage knocks on doors Listening to it, Dog reached straight for the ear-muffs. Nigel had better hope the voters don’t do likewise.   Flamboyant ex-Tory MP Jerry Hayes, who returned to his old job as a lawyer after being kicked out by the voters,  reveals that it was he who persuaded Chris Huhne’s former wife Vicky Pryce to use the ‘marital coercion’ defence in their speeding points case. To his annoyance, Vicky then chose another barrister to defend her – a lucky escape, gi

/li> 0 shares 0 comments It was a tough ask for anyone involved in the Eastleigh by-election to top Labour candidate John O’Farrell’s crass remark that he wished Margaret Thatcher had died in the Brighton bomb. But Toby Perkins, the Labour MP who helped O’Farrell, came close. In a cack-handed tribute to by-election runners-up UKIP, rugby-playing Perkins said: ‘UKIP ran a chaotic, organic campaign but, like  Al Qaeda, it was effective.’ Minus the suicide bombers, he forgot to add. Thatcher joke: Ed Miliband visiting Eastleigh to meet John O' Farrell for the by-election For once, Boris Johnson did not use David Cameron’s by-election woes to rub his Tory rival’s nose in the dirt. Asked about the party’s defeat in Eastleigh, the London Mayor creased his blond brow and grunted: ‘Small earthquake in Chile, time to move on.’ Which may go down well with the PM, if less so with the small community of Chilean expatriates in Johnson’s London.   Claire and a case of

/li> 10 comments Chris Huhne wrote a guide for a university magazine The seeds of Chris Huhne’s downfall were sown 40 years ago when he was a scheming young Machiavelli at Oxford. The former Cabinet Minister – who will be sentenced tomorrow for the speeding points fiasco – wrote a guide to the black arts for a university magazine that advised would-be politicians to ‘stab’ their foes at every opportunity, join whichever party gave them the best chance of getting to the top, and to stay away from Westminster if they were a ‘nice guy who likes his mamma’. Dog has a new one: don’t display such ruthlessness if you have a vengeful Greek ex-wife.   David Cameron has evoked Chairman Mao’s Cultural Revolution to apologise to his MPs for the party-splitting row over gay marriage. The PM told backbenchers at a recent lunch that there would not be ‘any more cultural wars in the Conservative Party’ – a sign that he is in no hurry to push any more divisive social policy ideas. O

/li> 2 comments Health Secretary Jeremy Hunt (pictured) bizarrely name-checked SS chief Heinrich Himmler while making a gag about Labour MP Michael Dugher Labour MP Michael Dugher is spitting blood over an ‘outrageously stupid’ Nazi-themed gag apparently aimed at him by Health Secretary Jeremy Hunt. As Mr Dugher (and his guitar) waited to perform at an MPs’ talent show for charity last week, compere Mr Hunt bizarrely name-checked SS chief Heinrich Himmler – before immediately adding: ‘And  now here’s Michael Dugher!’ Friends of Mr Dugher, MP for Barnsley East in Yorkshire, say he is livid over the incident; the Health Secretary blames  a misunderstanding. Either way, Dog hears an apology will be on its way.   Ex-Tory Minister Gillian Shephard’s new book, which reveals how Maggie Thatcher used her sex appeal to woo Ronald Reagan and Francois Mitterrand, did not surprise defence chiefs. A veteran brass hat recalls Mrs T clinched a £30 billion fighter-aircraft deal with