Sebastian Payne

How well did Damian McBride know Ed Balls ? Is he surprised at the scale of interest and hostility towards his book? How strong was his relationship with Ed Miliband? Did journalists ever suspect he was feeding them untruths? Fraser Nelson puts all these questions to the former Labour spin doctor on this week's View from 22 podcast (21:00), in light of his memoirs Power Trip, published this week. Labour conference is now over and three of Westminster's top political commentators give us their opinion on how it went.

Following the announcement of his plan to tackle rising energy prices — and the accompanying backlash — Ed Miliband has fired a warning shot at energy providers this morning, suggesting unless they get on board with his proposals, they will be seen as part of the problem, not the solution, by their customers. Here is the full text of his letter: 'In recent years we have discussed the need to rebuild public trust in the energy market many times. I think we all agree on the importance of that objective if we are to build a market that both delivers for consumers and underpins the investment in future clean energy capacity that we all want to see.

The first copies of Damian McBride's book dropped in Brighton today, and the former spinner has been explaining not just his actions in government but why on earth he decided to write about them. Here are the highlights of his confessions: Nearly everything the former spin doctor has said so far suggests he is quite contrite about his actions.

Damian McBride broke cover and made his first broadcast appearance this evening on Newsnight, defending his upcoming memoirs. McBride said he is 'sorry and ashamed' for those he targeted while in government.

Ed Miliband is not the only person who wanted Gordon Brown to sack Damian McBride. At an IPPR fringe event this evening, Douglas Alexander told The Guardian's Jonathan Freedland he urged the Prime Minister to sack McBride over media briefings that his sister Wendy should be sacked; briefings which McBride claimed came from Douglas: 'I did urge Gordon to dismiss someone, it was Damian McBride. That might explain the way he has briefed against me then and writes about me now. 'Listen, I was always a supporter of my sister. The politics that he represents is destructive, divisive and ultimately, deeply damaging to our politics and our cause. 'That was the view I held then — I expressed it on a number of occasions. It's what he did and what he does.

134,000. That’s how many members the Conservative Party now has, according to Paul Goodman at ConservativeHome. Despite months of campaigning from the site, the only figure Conservative HQ would release is that 253,600 people voted for David Cameron as leader in 2005. Today's number means that membership has nearly halved throughout Cameron’s eight-year term as party leader. Tracking the memberships of political parties is difficult, as they are under no obligation to release any details. The House of Commons Library released a paper in December last year, compiling all the figures they could find.

Ed Davey hasn't had a great conference. First the jokes in the energy secretary’s speech bombed. Then a sign fell on his head on live television (above). Now he's got Luciana Berger on his case over factual errors. The Labour MP has written to Davey to point out contrary to what he said in his conference speech, questions have been asked by the Labour front bench about climate change. Here is what Berger had to Davey about the ‘untrue claims in your speech to Lib Dem party conference’: Dear Mr Davey, I am writing to you about factually inaccurate statements made in your speech to the Liberal Democrat party conference yesterday.