On the day when the Liberal Democrats demanded that Chancellor Alistair Darling should go over his use of taxpayer-funded Parliamentary allowances.
There were further calls for Alistair Darling to resign today after an alleged newspaper published photographs of the Chancellor sleeping. The first of the pictures, splashed across five pages of the Daily Express, shows Mr Darling sleeping soundly and alone in a King Size bed at approximately 3am yesterday morning in what is his second home. Later pictures show him sitting up in bed and pointing at the camera, scowling, and a dramatic lurch towards the photographer and a cracked lens.
Mr Darling was unavailable for comment following the publication of the pictures.
Conservative Shadow Chancellor George Osborne condemned Mr Darling’s actions. "I have known Alistair Darling for some time, but for him to be sleeping at a time when Gordon Brown is planning his next holiday to France, is frankly disgraceful," he said. "His political career is quite obviously over."
Lib Dem nonentity Lembit Opik was similarly appalled. "Scary things often happen in the middle of the night," he told a busker in Westminster Tube Station. "Alistair Darling should be awake and on the job at all times like me, Ahem not like that, obviously."
Not to be outdone, the Daily Mail today cleared one of its pages of Lady Diana conspiracy stories in order to publish a large photograph of Mr Darling's wife, Margaret, leaving a supermarket. It was accompanied by the shocking revelation that she eats food and from time to time uses toilet paper to wipe her bottom.
