Our Top Ten Labour Conference karaoke tracks

By Mark Wallace
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Our deadly enemies good friends over at LabourList have just put out an appeal on Facebook. They're holding a karaoke night at Labour Conference and are inviting suggestions for top tracks to sing, so I thought ConHome could make a few suggestions to help them out.

It's a tricky task. A year ago, I imagine Plan B was pretty popular, but now he's off the playlist for obvious reasons.

Instead, here are the top ten tracks to really encompass the spirit of the Labour Party in 2013:

10) Red Red W(h)ine

Ok, so I've taken a small liberty with the spelling, but since when did good English have to stand in the way of a worthwhile pun?

9) Great Balls of Fire

It used to be Cameron going red in the face at PMQs while the Shadow Chancellor did that "flatlining" gesture - now it's Ed Balls blushing on the economy.

8) You Won't Get Me I'm Part of the Union

Two months ago, Unite's behaviour in Falkirk was the "death throes of the old politics", according to Ed MIliband. Now the suspended union officials are restored, the union is cleared of all charges and everything is fine. Teflon doesn't come close.

7) Gordon Is a Moron

I know he hasn't been Prime Minister for three years, but it was too good an opportunity to miss.

6) Under Pressure

Just look at that poll, Ed. Ouch.

5) Steal My Sunshine - by Len

Canadian one-hit-wonders they might be, but the perfect title/band name combo. I would have gone for the punk band McClusky, but none of the songs are publishable on a family website.

4) Puppet on a String

See 5)

3) Money's Too Tight to Mention - by Simply Red

I'm pretty sure Mick Hucknall didn't have the GMB affiliation fee in mind when he wrote this, or when he named his band, but if the cap fits...

2) Wannabe

Prime Minister? Zigazig-no.

1) Things Can Only Get Better

Because they can, right? Right?

Whitby Labour Councillor fathers child with alien queen - wife "unhappy"

By Mark Wallace
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It's fair to say that the Left harbours plenty of odd beliefs - from the idea that parents should be forbidden to leave their money to their kids, through to the claim that only more borrowing will allow us to overcome our debt problem.

But few can match the, ah, unusual ideas of Simon Parkes, a Labour councillor in Whitby, who has confessed to fathering a child with a mysterious extra-terrestrial known only as "The Cat Queen".

It definitely isn't April Fool's Day, so I can only assume Cllr Parkes was deadly serious when he told the Northern Echo that:

he has sexual relations with the alien about four times a year. “What will happen is that we will hold hands and I will say ‘I’m ready’ and then the technology I don’t understand will take us up to a craft orbiting the earth," he explained.

and that:

...his "real mother" is a 9ft green alien with eight fingers...

Lest I forget to mention, he is regularly abducted and is also being monitored by the security services (actually that one might not be so unreasonable, given recent news).

The news of his interplanetary infidelity has not gone down well:

"My wife found out about it and was very unhappy, clearly."

I bet.

Ed Miliband kept "boring my ear off" and "pestering me for a picture"

By Tim Montgomerie
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Actress Helen Flanagan met Ed Miliband at an awards event last night and has just Tweeted her fellow jungle celebrity Nadine Dorries with this...

Labour MPs queue up on Twitter to congratulate the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge

By Paul Goodman
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Oh...hang on a moment...

Observer columnist Will Hutton heaps praise on the European project

By Matthew Barrett
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Will Hutton's column in the Observer today must be a collector's item: it's the first time I've seen someone praise the European project so much in months:

"A curious thing happened last week. European governments rose to the occasion. The euro, confidently predicted by almost every British analyst and commentator to be on the point of collapse, survived. Instead, an effective package was put together that for the time being saved the day. It is almost certain that there will be more dramas and more financial muscle needed before the crisis is over, but now it is at last obvious that European governments can and will do what it takes to keep the single currency alive. Pro-Europeans have something to cheer about."

The pro-€uro wisdom of Chris Huhne

By Tim Montgomerie
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Not so long ago Chris Huhne was a passionate advocate for the Euro:

"The 'no' campaigners said the euro was doomed to failure, but all their predictions have been proved wrong."

"The euro is living up to the highest expectations of the economists who advocated it, and Britain is missing out."

And this...

"The freedom to set interest rates merely according to domestic needs is a cruel mirage. Monetary union protects economies from the vagaries of speculative capital flows, enabling more stable growth and investment."

The man who is now Climate Change Secretary and urging us all to adopt ruinously expensive energy policies.

I am grateful to Mary Ann Sieghart for gathering these quotes together. In today's Independent she reminds us of the many Europhiles who were wrong on the biggest economic and political decision of the last twenty years. She concludes with this Huhne-sized gem:

[Huhne's] "book, Both Sides of the Coin: The Arguments for the Euro and European Monetary Union, is now available from five booksellers on Amazon for just 1p. His arguments – then and now – are as debased as the price."

Labour needs all-Tim shortlists

Tim Montgomerie

In Saturday's Independent Andy McSmith has uncovered a huge scandal.

There has never been a Labour MP from that great class of people called Tim.

There have been "a few Toms, a Tam and a [Stephen] Timms" but never a Timothy.

There is no anti-Timmery in the Conservatives or Liberal Democrats. The current Lib Dem president, Mr Farron, is a Tim although he unseated another Tim (Mr Collins) so his contribution to Timmery is not uncomplicated. In total, reveals Andy McSmith, at least twelve Tims have become Tory MPs; Boswell, Brinton, Collins, Devlin, Eggar, Janman, Kirkhope, Loughton, Raison, Rathbone, Renton, Sainsbury, Smith, Wood and Yeo.

The injustice might be about to be corrected because a Tim is favoured to be the Labour candidate for the likely Barnsley Central by-election. Otherwise an all-Tim shortlist seems the minimum response that one should expect from Ed Miliband.

Who was Labour's worst minister?

Daniel Finkelstein is on the hunt. His first nomination is the new Deputy speaker of the Commons, Dawn Primarolo:

"Dawn Primarolo - known from her days as a Tony Benn constituency activist as Red Dawn - was a minister from the first day of Labour in office to the last. Without ever once looking as though she should be."

Ouch.

Am I allowed to nominate Gordon Brown for reasons that are obvious?

Tim Montgomerie

First the Liberal Democrats had a fake nurse in their election literature, now a fake policeman

Last week the Liberal Democrats in Wales got a researcher who had never been a nurse to dress up as a nurse for an election leaflet. Today we learn that the photo of their Welsh leader - talking to a policeman - is also fake. The BBC has the report.

Gordon Brown relaunches Labour's campaign... with an Elvis impersonator

Desperate times call for desperate measures, they say.

And the Labour campaign took a surreal turn this morning.

The great relaunch of Labour's campaign took place this morning at an event in Corby - where Louise Bagshawe is poised to oust Labour MP Phil Hope - and involved Brown making a series of outrageous claims about how a Conservative government would reduce the NHS to a 'sub-standard' service.

His scare-mongering claims were all the more spurious given that the Conservatives have of course promised to increase spending on the NHS in real terms - a commitment which not even Labour will match.

And then came the weird bit. Onto the stage then came Labour's latest secret weapon: an Elvis impersonator. It really was quite bizarre.

I have not been able to verify reports that Labour is now considering using the 1958 Elvis B-side I Got Stung as its new campaign song, or indeed that Brown will adopt the King's little-known 1971 single I'm Leavin' as his personal theme at remaining campaign events... 

> Click here to watch the video of the bizarre spectacle

Jonathan Isaby