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And now a contributor to has come up with another name being mooted for Nottingham East - the defence minister, East Midlands MP and former Tory, Quentin Davies.

If Downing Street is going to get Mr Davies a seat nearly three years after he defected to them, they must be running out of ideas.

Have the Conservatives averted another local rumpus - this time in Surrey - over one of their Cameroon candidates?

I am hearing about a big revolt this week inside the Conservative association in Surrey East where they selected a candidate, Sam Gyimah, a few weeks ago.

On Tuesday evening the association held an emergency general meeting. The problem was an article which appeared recently in Private Eye making allegations about Mr Gyimah's businesses.

Two of his companies have gone bust, the magazine said, whilst another is badly in debt.

Local party members were furious that they weren't given this information at the time they selected Mr Gyimah, when he was presented to them as one of Britain's most successful young entrepreneurs.

But the Surrey East association was far from a happy ship to start with. Before they picked Mr Gyimah, who is black, as their candidate many local Tory activists were unhappy at the way they had been obliged to choose from a six-strong shortlist imposed on them by the party high command - a list which was notable (in conservative Surrey) for lacking any straight white men.

Some senior activists felt the shortlist was "too PC" and didn't adequately reflect the demographic make-up of the Surrey East constituency.

On Tuesday night, a Central Office official wielded the big stick with the Surrey East Conservatives, warning them that the local party would be disbanded if they tried to sack Mr Gyimah.

And local officers were told they would face strong disciplinary action if they spoke out about the crisis in public.

In particular, local and district councillors were warned they might lose the party whip if they breathed a word about the row to the media.

So the party decided they had better stick with Sam Gyimah.

In a statement about his business activities Mr Gyimah said: "Private Eye has inaccurately characterised my past business activity. I have been involved in two businesses as an entrepreneur. One company, Workology, was successfully restructured. The other company mentioned was Clearstone whose business difficulties began sometime after I relinquished management control.

"Sadly, the company had to sell off its assets and transfer staff and customers to a new company, at which point all of my links with the company were severed in full."

Whilst the situation at Clearstone was unfortunate, it happened after my involvement in running it. And, Workology is an example of successful, if not difficult, restructuring."

So, as I speculated in my blog last week, John Heppell has just announced he is retiring as Labour MP for Nottingham East. He is stepping down to help his wife fight cancer.

We now wait to see whether Gordon Brown's deputy political secretary in Downing Street, Jonathan Ashworth, who lives in Nottinghamshire, will go for it.

More news from Labour's selection process in Stoke on Trent Central, where Peter Mandelson seems to be making great efforts to get the historian Tristram Hunt chosen.

I am told the NEC Special Selections Panel is interviewing candidates for the Stoke short-list on Monday, and that the short-list will appear before hustings for party members in Stoke next Thursday.

The former Tribune editor Mark Seddon hasn't even been invited for an interview, despite Mr Brown telling him at Michael Foot's funeral that he should be in Parliament, and despite claiming the support of the retiring MP for Stoke-on-Trent Central, Mark Fisher.

Another rejected from the Stoke selection is the Hackney councillor and former Labour student leader Luke Akehurst.

Stephen Byers notoriously spoke of himself as being like a "cab-for-hire" at £5,000 a time.

I'm not sure I'd be interested in hiring that particular cab given that during his time as transport secretary Byers caused quite a stir when it was revealed that he couldn't drive and had no driving licence.

Tonight the Unite union got another message of support from the American Teamsters union in their dispute with British Airways.

The Teamsters' leader James P. Hoffa, speaking along with the leader of the US Transport Workers Union, said: "Unite has exceeded the standard of not only negotiating, but presenting specific cost savings proposals to Mr. Walsh to help British Airways in these very difficult economic times. Sadly, these proposals were rejected. They were rejected because of one man's bias and obsession with breaking a labor union.

"We are keenly aware of British Airways' operations in the United States and the cities served by the airline. We continue to look at this situation as it evolves and are keeping our options open."

In the 1950s and 60s the Teamsters union represented the very worst of American trade unionism.

The Teamsters union was deeply corrupt, had strong links with the Mafia and organised crime, and often behaved like a bunch of gangsters. Its then leader, Jimmy Hoffa, was sentenced to 13 years in jail for bribery and fraud.

In 1975 Hoffa famously disappeared just as he was about to meet two Mafia leaders. His body was never found.

Yes, the current Teamsters union leader James P. Hoffa is the son of Jimmy Hoffa. No doubt Hoffa junior has managed to clean the union up, and the Teamsters union is a very different organisation these days. Nor should one condemn people for the sins of their parents.

But from Unite's point-of-view, it strikes me as pretty unfortunate public relations to have backing from a body with such a notorious past.

Things are hotting up in Stoke-on-Trent Central in the battle to succeed Mark Fisher as the local MP. It's a safe Labour seat.

The favourite for the Labour nomination is probably Byron Taylor, national officer of TULO, the Trade Union and Labour Party Liaison Organisation, which co-ordinates union support for the Labour Party.

Mr Taylor announced his candidacy on his own website two days ago. And how convenient, too, that a web-page posted by Mr Taylor on behalf of TULO organisation only the day before (Tuesday) shows him amongst a group of trade unionists campaigning in Stoke last Saturday against the BNP.

Another contender in Stoke is the historian Tristram Hunt, who is being strongly promoted by Peter Mandelson for a seat, but was defeated by the organised forces of Unite when he recently lost to John Cryer in Leyton and Wanstead.

But some local figures in Stoke are dismissive of the idea of a trendy middle class academic called Tristram mounting an effective campaign against the BNP in a strongly working-class seat. But then Mark Fisher was not only an Old Etonian, but also the son of a Conservative MP.

A more intriguing contender for Stoke-on-Trent Central is the left-wing former editor of Tribune, Mark Seddon, who tried for Stoke-on-Trent South some years ago.

Another attempt, at Gower in South Wales some years ago, was thwarted by Labour's national hierarchy who regard him as too much of a trouble-maker.

But Seddon is considerably cheered by the fact that Gordon Brown told him at Michael Foot's funeral earlier this week that he should be in Parliament. Not that one should ever describe Seddon as the Downing Street candidate.

Meanwhile I hear that one of Mr Brown's Downing Street aides, Jonathan Ashworth, is hovering above the East Midlands in the hope - or expectation - that one of the area's MPs may announce a last-minute resignation.

He originally seemed to be pinning his hopes on Alan Meale in Mansfield, I'm told, but Mr Meale is staying put. Mr Ashworth's latest hope, I understand, lies with the Nottingham East MP John Heppell deciding to call it a day.

As the Prime Minister's deputy political secretary, Mr Ashworth may get something of a head start in being alerted to any new vacancies. By tradition, before Labour MPs announce they are stepping down, they seek a 15 minute audience with Gordon Brown in Number Ten, a kind of courtesy farewell visit.

Indeed so many Labour MPs have been visiting the Prime Minister for their 15 minutes of glory in recent weeks, that Mr Brown's diary secretary has had great trouble fitting them all in.

In his interview with Evan Davis on the Today programme this morning, William Hague admitted he now regrets writing to then-Prime Minister Tony Blair in 1999 to say:

"Mr Ashcroft is... committed to becoming resident by the next financial year in order properly to fulfil his responsibilities in the House of Lords. This decision will cost him (and benefit the Treasury) tens of millions a year in tax yet he considers it worthwhile."

Note that the benefit to the Treasury would not just have been "tens of millions", in tax, but "tens of millions A YEAR".

By my simple reckoning that would have brought the Treasury HUNDREDS of millions of pounds in Ashcroft tax in all over the years since 1999.

And the UK National Debt would be therefore now be hundreds of millions of pounds lower.

Now it's just possible that Lord Ashcroft has been paying "tens of millions a year" in tax on his UK earnings, but I doubt that very much.

And I doubt if anyone else really believes that.

I imagine that Lord Ashcroft's UK earnings are pretty insignificant. And that his UK tax payments are therefore pretty small, by his standards anyway.

He can correct me if I am wrong.

So Mr Hague's 1999 letter was quite a substantial and potentially lucrative promise. And it's been an extremely costly failure that nobody followed it through properly.

A failure not just by Mr Hague and David Cameron (and Tory leaders in between) but also by Mr Blair, Gordon Brown, and officials working for the Cabinet Office under Labour.

First David Beckham... and now, er, Andy Burnham.

Last week the former Manchester United star David Beckham showed his support for the grassroots United fans' campaign against the Glazer regime, by picking up one of the green and gold scarves associated with the protest movement.

And on Saturday, at a Fabian Society conference in Manchester, the Health Secretary Andy Burnham showed his backing for the green and gold campaign by also holding a scarf.

This was quite a gesture by Mr Burnham since he is a committed Everton fan.

Mr Burnham said: "The green and gold movement is another manifestation of the great campaigning heritage of this city, and long may that continue."

(As a supporter of the campaign myself, I ought to declare an interest!) .

The Liberal Democrat MP Tim Farron at his party's rally in Birmingham tonight, after explaining that he'll be returning straight to Cumbria tonight to campaign:

"You'll have to forgive my absence from the bar tonight, which will reduce the number of straight blokes by about 20 per cent. Still you'll cope. There's always Lembit."

I spent this afternoon in the Chilterns, gauging reaction to the government's new High Speed Rail Link from London to Birmingham.

It astonished me how many people who are directly affected by the new route had heard nothing about it in advance.

Indeed, in several cases I was the first to tell them.

This evening, for example, I came across a farmer and his wife whose farm will be split in two by the new line, with deep cuttings and a viaduct directly on top of their farmhouse.

The plans suggest their farmhouse will be acquired compulsorily.

The farmer's wife said she was "shocked", and seemed quite worried. Then I flagged down her husband as he was out driving his tractor, slowly ploughing up and down a steep field.

The new railway was complete news to him too.

"We'll all be millionaires!" he said.

And with that, he turned away and carried on ploughing.

UPDATE AT 2239GMT

Latest News:

I am told that Torsten Henricson-Bell has now decided NOT to put his name forward for Stalybridge and Hyde, though I understand that he was thinking about doing so.

I hope it wasn't my story which put him off.

It is an area that brings back fond memories for me. As a schoolboy, I spent many happy hours trainspotting on Stalybridge station (which still has a brilliant buffet-cum-bar), and then one summer as a student I worked as a "chain-boy" (carrying the surveyors' equipment) while they were constructing the M67 through the centre of Hyde.

ENTRY FROM 2106GMT

Word reaches me that a young Whitehall Special Advisor Torsten Henricson-Bell is spending a lot of time in the relatively safe Labour seat that James Purnell is vacating.

Were uber-Blairite Purnell, who resigned from the cabinet in protest at Gordon Brown's leadership, to be replaced by a friend of Ed Balls (former civil-servant Torsten began his journey into Labour politics while working for Mr Balls' wife Yvette Cooper), well let's just say the ironymeter might break.

Since late selections are as much a trial of who has the most strength within the Labour and trade union machine as anything (as the recent selection of John Cryer in Leytonstone and Jack Dromey in Birmingham Edrington show), it would also be a sign of who might triumph in any forthcoming leadership election. Not one that David Miliband will like I suspect.

Several observations on Ed Vaizey's apparent gaffe on tonight's Channel 4 programme, Cameron Uncovered, about David Cameron, in which he apparently says that Samantha Cameron may have voted Labour in 1997, and may even contemplate voting for Gordon Brown this time.

Both suggestions have been strenuously denied by Conservative HQ.

First, I was always under the impression that Samantha had not always been a rock-solid Conservative voter, and colleagues concur with this.

In any case why are the Conservatives complaining so vehemently about the suggestion that Samantha voted Labour in 1997?

OK, it may not be true, but surely getting Labour's 1997 voters to switch to them is what the Conservatives should be all about at the moment, and what better than for Mrs Cameron to be a prime example.

Split couples are nothing new in British politics. There are the Bercows, John and Sally, of course. And after the former Conservative MP Robert Jackson switched to Labour in 2005, his wife Caroline remained a Conservative MEP for another four years.

And the former Tory MP Robin Squire was married to a Labour activist.

Clement Attlee's wife Violet, who famously drove him around during election campaigns, was always known to be a life-long Conservative voter. But it didn't seem to do her husband much harm - indeed it may have helped Labour win over wavering Conservatives.

Some years ago I was told that in 1996, only a few months before she got engaged to William Hague, Ffion Jenkins was approached about becoming the Lib Dem candidate in Montgomeryshire (a Lib Dem seat), and she thought about the proposition for several days.

Lib Dems in Montgomeryshire had approached Ffion because the Jenkinses were a well-known Welsh Liberal family.

Meanwhile, his comments can't have done anything to reverse the apparent downward path of Mr Vaizey's political career.

Four years ago he was thought to be one of the original Cameroons, a rising star whose elevation to the Shadow Cabinet was only a matter of time.

Since then he largely seems to have disappeared, and to have lost favour with his leader, even before his Channel 4 comments.

Some colleagues say he's too laid back. But I'm told there's another explanation too. If anyone can enlighten me, I'd love to know.

Two political stories have dominated most of this week - Lord Ashcroft and Michael Foot - though there is no apparent link between them.

Or is there? In revealing that Lord Ashcroft is a "non-dom" for tax purposes, the Conservatives rightly point out that several big Labour donors are non-doms too, most notably the industrialist Lord Paul.

Now a colleague has drawn my attention to this passage from Kenneth Morgan's great biography of Michael Foot, where Mr Morgan writes of the fallout from the closure of the Ebbw Vale steel works in 1975, where Foot was MP, and whilst he was also Employment Secretary:

"He [Foot] persuaded a British-based Indian industrialist, Swraj Paul, Chairman of National Gas Tubes, to invest in the constituency by setting up the most advanced spiral weld steel mill in Europe, with the aid of funding from the British government and the EEC - Foot, an arch anti-European, was fully prepared to receive money from Europe for a good cause.

"Swraj Paul [later Lord Paul] had earlier helped to arrange Foot's first visit to India in 1973, and his giving the Krishna Menon Lecture, in honour of the old socialist guru of the thirties, in November 1976. Foot 'a man who inspires trust through his integrity', was always a hero to him.

"Swraj Paul's plant was opened on 22 November 1978 by no less a person than Mrs Ghandi. The Ebbw Vale economy continued to limp along."

It might also be added that when Indira Ghandi declared a state of emergency back in India in the late 1970s, Foot publicly came to her defence, thereby tarnishing his reputation as a great libertarian

I ought to wish happy birthday to Lord Ashcroft, who is 64 today.

And no doubt amidst all the controversy over his tax status and over why he kept William Hague in the dark for 10 years, he may well be asking David Cameron: "Will you still need me, will you still feed me, when I'm 64?"

If I ever bet on politics I'd put a substantial sum of money on Ed Miliband as the next Labour leader, not least because he'd fulfil my rule of leadership elections, which is that winner is usually the youngest contender (it works for about 75% of all post-war elections).

But also because he's the one tipped by many, if not most, Labour people I speak to these days.

Now the Unite leader Derek Simpson has come out in support of the younger of the Milibands to succeed Gordon Brown.

Mr Simpson tells tomorrow's edition of the New Statesman:

"In my view [and this is a complete quote, not part of a quote] I'll be perfectly happy for Gordon Brown to continue as long as he wants and, by that time, I suspect that Ed Miliband will be experienced enough to warrant my support as Labour leader."

Michael Foot wasn't just a former leader of the Labour Party and former Cabinet minister, but boasted a political career of extraordinary longevity.

He first stood for Parliament in 1935 - for Monmouth.

He played an important role in the anti-appeasement movement and was one of only two survivors of those MPs elected in 1945 - the other being John Freeman.

He was also the oldest surviving ex-MP.

And quite aside from politics, he has an important career as a writer, literary critic, biographer and journalist.

And he was the only leader of either main party since World War II to retire and die without taking a title of any kind.

Michael Foot was also a keen supporter of Plymouth Argyle Football Club, and was even allocated the club's no 90 shirt on his 90th birthday, and he was named every game in the squad list in the programme.

He was also a shareholder and director of the club.

According to his friend David May, who was still driving Foot to matches until about four years ago: "He first went to games when he was seven years old." - which must have been in about 1920.

There is also a story that Tony Blair got excited one day that Foot announced he was dropping by to see him in his Sedgefield constituency.

But Blair was rather disappointed when Foot only stayed a few minutes. His real reason to go up to the North East was to watch Argyle.

"It was like arriving with a celebrity," says his Argyle companion David May. "You'd have to push him through the crowd. Everyone would want his autograph. People kept referring to him as 'Lord Foot', and he got quite ferocious about that: 'No, I'm not.' He always refused a title."

His ambition was to live long enough to see Plymouth Argyle in the Premiership. Sadly they never made it.

Peter Mandelson joined the fray over Lord Ashcroft's tax status today, but a Conservative MP has rung to point out that between 2005 and 2008, when he was an EU Commissioner, Lord Mandelson himself would have been exempt from UK tax, and would only have had to pay a special EU levy of around 4% of his income.

In which case, isn't it Lord Mandelson's "patriotic duty" to make up the difference, and pay HM Revenue what he would have had to pay on his income had he been living in the UK?

By my reckoning that would amount to a considerable six-figure sum.

I'm told that back in May 1999 Michael Ashcroft was one of 36 names lined up by the party leaders for working peerages, but the row over his proposed elevatiions caused quite a scare amongst all the rest.

On 24 May 1999 the appointments secretary in Downing Street, John Holroyd, wrote to all 36 nominees telling them that their names would appear in the London Gazette the following Friday as new life peers.

But then amazingly two days later Mr Holroyd wrote again to the 36 names, and announced that "for reasons beyond our control the list of working peers has had to be delayed. Your working peerage will not be announced this Friday".

This caused huge dismay amongst those expecting they'd soon be in the Lords.

"Crikey, what have I done wrong?" Was the reaction of many of them. Would they be denied their grand new titles at the very last moment?

It was only later that the proposed peers learnt that the list had been held up because of concerns about Ashcroft.

William Hague was forced to withdraw Ashcroft's name (though he successfully got him through the following year).

And the remaining 35 names were duly promoted to the Lords.

I can report that the "Leaders' Debates" at the forthcoming election have now been cancelled.

Instead, over the past 2-3 weeks they've been quietly replaced with "Prime Ministerial Debates".

It's a cunning manoeuvre, agreed by the three main broadcasters (the ³ÉÈËÂÛ̳, ITV and Sky) and the three main parties, to exclude the SNP and Plaid Cymru leaders from the debates.

Since the SNP will only be fighting the 59 Scottish seats then Alex Salmond can't possibly become prime minister (nor Plaid's Elfyn Llwyd), so both are thereby disqualified from the TV debates.

I'd love to know who dreamt up this clever wheeze. A politician or a broadcaster? The latter, I bet.