The intervention came as the cross-party British Influence group launches a manifesto titled Better off in a Better Europe

The Tories, baying  at every mention  like a pantomime audience, lapped it up

Former Business Secretary says HS2 could 'damage' the northern regions it is intended to help

The original purpose for which the trade unions created the Labour Party was to get working-class representatives into Parliament. The old engineering union, the AUEW, which has now been absorbed in Unite, had a particularly strong record for taking members off the factory floor, training them up and getting them into Parliament.

Jemima Khan, daughter of Sir James Goldsmith, who was arguably the stroppiest multi-millionaire of his generation, has met a lot of characters, from Nick Clegg to Julian Assange, but her encounter with Peter Mandelson, the old Labour spin master, was evidently of a different order.

Former Deputy Prime Minister irate at missing out on title

When politicians who believe everyone is middle class see vast decaying housing estates, they must think someone’s having a giant dinner party with a Victorian theme.

The political graveyard is littered with ex-future leaders who have risen too fast only to wilt in the heat of too much exposure. With that caveat, let it be noted that Chuka Umunna, Labour's shadow Business Secretary, is acquiring the kind of aura that Tony Blair or Gordon Brown had 27 years ago, when the Tory diarist Alan Clark singled them out as Labour's "two bright boys".

Alastair Campbell told the Leveson Inquiry yesterday that he believed Cherie Blair's former style guru, Carole Caplin, was the source of leaks that revealed some of the inside secrets of the Blairs' life inside No 10. However Tony Blair's former spinner-in-chief revealed that Ms Caplin was recently been told by Scotland Yard that her mobile was targeted by Glenn Mulcaire, the jailed private detective commissioned by the News of the World.

Another memoir from a former member of Brown's government adds brushstroke detail and depth to his monster status

Nick Clegg, whose party colours are usually a bright shade of yellow, was looking distinctly blue yesterday as he met party activists for a question-and-answer session in Glasgow. Police said that a 20-year-old man had been arrested after blue paint was thrown at the Deputy Prime Minister.

News International faces the threat of a new police inquiry into allegations of illegal newsgathering techniques after Scotland Yard revealed it is considering a full criminal inquiry into the activities of a disgraced private eye who supplied the News of the World.

Two former Cabinet ministers have demanded the Metropolitan Police tell them whether they were targeted by Jonathan Rees.

It was curiously fitting to find In Our Time contemplating the end of the world as we know it. It's all too easy, gazing round the broadcasting landscape and chancing on programmes like F*** Off I'm Fat, or Snog, Marry, Avoid?, to get an inkling of cultural apocalypse. But if there was ever a programme to be put in a time capsule to prove that alongside the deluge of drivel with which we divert ourselves there was something that justified millennia of brain evolution, then it's In Our Time. I don't think this is over the top, is it?