If Gordon Brown had a catchphrase it would be the wooden utterance — often delivered for the benefit of party activists or public sector workers — thanking them “for all that they do”.

Signing a “G8 quilt” made by primary school children alongside Barack Obama today, Cameron seems to have tapped his predecessor for inspiration.

Better that than leading Barack into a broom cupboard.

Probably not his sickest tweet ever — but it’s up there.

If the Guardian’s splash based on leaked GCHQ PowerPoint slides lifts the lid on bugging of diplomats at international meetings, it has been unscrewed since at least 2004 — when former international development secretary Clare Short let the cat out of the bag on spying at the United Nations.

In an interview with John Humphrys, Short was asked about US spooks’ attempts to enlist the British in bugging UN Security Council delegations in the run up to the Iraq war.

The former Birmingham MP, who quit the Labour Party in 2006, then revealed that British intelligence services has been bugging, errr, UN secretary general Kofi Annan with the knowledge of ministers:

JH: What this memo showed … was pressure from the United States on other countries to get support for a second UN resolution and spying indeed on those countries. Do you believe that Britain, our government, might have been involved in that with the United States?

CS: … The UK in this time was also spying on Kofi Annan’s office and getting reports from him about what was going on …

JH: Pressure is one thing, you expect that I suppose, spinning is another thing – you expect that I suppose, spying, spying in the United Nations is something quite different isn’t it?

CS: Well indeed, but these things are done. And in the case of Kofi’s office it’s been done for some time.

JH: Let me repeat the question then, do you believe Britain has been involved in it?

CS: Well I know, I have seen transcripts of Kofi Annan’s conversations.

Indeed, I have had conversations with Kofi in the run-up to war thinking ‘Oh dear, there will be a transcript of this and people will see what he and I are saying’.

JH: So in other words British spies – let’s be very clear about this in case I’m misunderstanding you – British spies have been instructed to carry out operations inside the United Nations on people like Kofi Annan?

CS: Yes, absolutely.

JH: Did you know about this when you were in government?

CS: Absolutely, I read some of the transcripts of the accounts of his conversations.

JH: Is this legal?

CS: I don’t know, I presume so. It is odd, but I don’t know about the legalities.

Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose.

Perhaps the Tory SpAds that assisted with those three Free Schools in his constituency can shed some light on the matter?

Recorded attacks against Muslims in London have increased by 700% in the wake of the murder of soldier Lee Rigby, the Metropolitan Police have revealed. Commander Simon Letchford told Today on Radio 4 that recorded Islamophobic incidents have jumped from one a day to eight — and that the true total is likely to be significantly higher.

While most incidents have been verbal abuse, the figures also include criminal damage, assaults and two suspected arson attacks on a school in Bromley and and an Islamic centre in Barnet — both mocked on social media by the official EDL Twitter feed and that of a splinter group, Combined Ex-Forces:

But EDL leader Tommy Robinson failed to see the funny side when a Twitter troll made reference to his own children.

As Scrapbook pointed out yesterday, the scope of the government’s proposed changes to election campaign expenses will likely go far beyond their intended target (trade unions). Indeed, the first up for the Nick Clegg-backed circular firing squad could his Lib Dem colleague, energy and climate change secretary Ed Davey.

New rules forcing election agents to account for additional printing overhead costs such as office space will naturally lead to awkward questions over the current and future use of equipment purchased with MPs’ expenses. A case in point is the £14,687 industrial-standard envelope stuffing machine bought by Ed Davey with help from the now abolished Communications Allowance.

This machine can prepare 4,500 communications an hour, meaning that Davey could fill enough envelopes to reach every household in his constituency in just ten hours. The issue of whether taxpayers’ money has been used to bootstrap party propaganda operations — and how this would be accounted for under new proposals for election expenses — is one that may well lead the Electoral Commission to Kingston and Surbiton.

Perhaps Ed can start by revealing the whereabouts of his Maximailer Inserter and what he has been using it for since the Communications Allowance was abolished in January 2010.

Measures backed by Nick Clegg to restrict printing of Labour leaflets by trade unions could backfire on the Lib Dems’ own production of printed material, Political Scrapbook can reveal. Plans to force the Labour Party to swallow union printing overheads such as staffing and equipment – tacked onto proposals for a statutory register of lobbyists at the last minute – threaten to drag the Lib Dems’ network of “printing societies” into the open.

Much of the network through which local Lib Dem parties produce campaign materials exists in the legal shadows — taking the form of unincorporated ”black box” organisations with no legal status, bookkeeping or auditors. So-called printing societies have received little scrutiny despite many being endowed with expensive professional equipment paid for by the taxpayer through the controversial (and now abolished) Communications Allowance.

According to the Guardian:

“the full costs of any third-party election campaign expenditure, rather than just marginal costs, will be counted towards a party’s spending cap at national and constituency level. In the case of leaflet printing, full costs include an allocation for staff and premises while the marginal costs only count paper and ink.”

While this might drive up election expenses for constituency Labour Parties  – it would presumably force the Liberal Democrats to reveal their full network of printing societies to the Electoral Commission, along with details of existing equipment, its whereabouts and how it was paid for.

And who knows what financially embarrassing details might emerge from that can of worms.

“In the past 10 days the Prime Minister has been busy. As well as responding with maturity, proportion and resolution to the jihadist atrocity in Woolwich, he has been advancing on a broad front.”

Surely he means “abroad front”?

EDL leader Tommy Robinson has been burnishing the focus brought to his leadership of the English Defence League by a new healthy lifestyle in which he only drinks alcohol on one day — St George’s day, of course!

“If I’m honest I’m quite guilty myself of when I look at the last three or four years of how I’ve carried myself because I drank a lot. That last documentary I done, a lot of it I was drunk [sic]“

“I was doing it a lot of the time to deal with the pressures and stresses of leading the English Defence League. I’ve only had a drink once, on St George’s day, in nine months.”

Scrapbook ventures that Robinson’s sobriety over the last few months owes less to his own powers of self-restraint than that spell in prison followed by a home detention and curfew order.

A top Labour councillor has come under fire for urging a Tory colleague to “resign or commit suicide” during a fierce debate on the hated bedroom tax. The party’s leader on Worcestershire County, Peter McDonald, made the remark at a debate on paying council employees a living wage.

Referring to a disabled woman who threw herself in front of a speeding lorry on the M6 after being hit with an extra £80/month charge for her council house, McDonald said:

“So far we’ve already had one tragic suicide over the bedroom tax”

Pointing towards a group of Conservative councillors including the executive blocking the living wage proposal, he added:

“He ought to resign or commit suicide”

The Tories subsequently voted down motions from both Labour and the Lib Dem groups looking to introduce a pay boost to £7.45/hour for 173 of the council’s lowest paid workers. For the cleaners representing the bulk of that workforce, an internal council report indicated this would have amounted to a modest increase of 11%.

Cllr McDonald later apologised for the comments which ”were made in the heat of the moment.”