People in Downing Street are especially angry because Gordon Brown's instinctive reaction last weekend, after all the recent deaths in Afghanistan, was to get on a plane on Sunday, and go to visit British troops in Helmand to show his sympathy and solidarity.

I'm told, however, that Sir Richard and his colleagues advised the Prime Minister that whilst the Army had no problem with Mr Brown visiting Afghanistan at some point this summer, it would be "too dangerous" simply for the PM to make an unplanned, spur-of-the-moment trip.

Mr Brown accepted this advice. His plans were dropped and instead he made a statement about Afghanistan to the Commons on Monday.

I'm told that what especially infuriated Brown and his colleagues in Number Ten however is that on Wednesday morning Dannatt suddenly popped up on the Today programme, speaking from Afghanistan, voicing his scarcely-veiled criticisms of government policy.

Some of Brown's aides immediately concluded that they had been badly outmanoeuvred, and that Sir Richard and his colleagues didn't want a high-profile surprise trip by the Prime Minister to steal the thunder of Dannatt's own long-planned farewell visit.

And the fact that Today presenter Sarah Montague and her BBC producer travelled out by plane with the Army chief last Sunday, make Brown's staff even more suspicious. They think the whole trip and the attendant publicity were long-planned, and that Sir Richard has badly over-stepped the mark in what he's said this week.

On the other hand, Sir Richard and his colleagues were surely right in that it would undoubtedly have been very risky in the current circumstances for Gordon Brown to visit Afghanistan. A lot more risky than for Dannatt himself or for Sarah Montague.

There may also be an element of paranoia among people in Downing Street, which would hardly be surprising. But that in itself is important element in the story.

Now the relationship between Number Ten and Sir Richard is expected to get a lot worse, especially once the general retires next month, and becomes head of the defence think tank RUSI where he's expected to become a regular military pundit on radio and TV.

LATEST 21.30PM:
The Ministry of Defence (MoD) has confirmed to me tonight that Gordon Brown did enquire about making a trip to Afghanistan, but that they advised against him going for "operational sensitivities". The MoD insists the Prime Minister was advised by them not to go, and not by General Sir Richard Dannatt.

Threatened with a huge rebellion - and possible defeat - in the Commons on Monday, the Justice Secretary Jack Straw has made a dramatic U-turn and withdrawn government opposition to an amendment to the Elections Bill recently passed in the Lords by an alliance of Labour rebels, Liberal Democrats and cross-benchers.

The leader of the Lords rebellion Lord Campbell-Savours has confirmed to me that ministers have now accepted his plan, and this has also been confirmed to me by a senior government source.

The measure is clearly aimed at the Conservative Deputy Chairman and election strategist Lord Ashcroft who has given the Conservative Party millions of pounds in recent years, but who has aroused considerable controversy over whether he pays British tax.

But it is likely to have a significant effect on donations to both the major parties.

Both Labour and the Conservatives are thought to have taken large sums of money from wealthy supporters who are non-domiciled in the UK for tax purposes.

Mr Straw has held a series of meeting with Lords and Commons rebels this week but has finally conceded on the issue in the last 36 hours.

Ministers claimed they were sympathetic to the measure but told rebels there were various legal and technical reasons, and issues of principle as to why it was unworkable.

Some rebels suspected however, that Labour may have been hoping for big donations in the immediate future from supporters who do not pay UK tax.

Ministry of Justice officials will be working frantically over this weekend to overcome these obstacles.

Mr Burden says that on the day the News of the World royal editor Clive Goodman was jailed for four months for hacking into the voicemails of palace aides, Mr Coulson called a staff meeting to announce his immediate resignation, and told colleagues that he thought Goodman had been treated far too harshly by the judge.

According to Mr Burden, Mr Coulson "took the opportunity to vent his anger at the sentence, railing that just that week the Home Secretary, John Reid, had advised judges, in view of current prison overcrowding, that only the most dangerous criminals should be sent to prison".

It would be interesting to know if Mr Coulson still takes that view.

And still supports John Reid's efforts to reduce prison overcrowding!

If the Labour whips were to call the by-election right now it would occur slap-bang in the middle of the school holidays. Labour thinks doing that last summer helped ruin their chances in the by-election in neighbouring Glasgow East, a supposedly safe Labour seat famously won by the SNP.

Under the rules Labour can't issue the writ for the by-election whilst the Commons is in recess. MPs won't come back to Westminster until 12 October 2009, which could mean an election on Thursday 12 November 2009. Technically they could hold it on 5 November 2009 but that's unlikely given the religious sensitivity of bonfire night in the West of Scotland.

"We want to hold the election quicker than that," my senior source says, "but there's nothing we can do about it. We can't hold it in the holidays again. We got a lot of criticism for that."

At the moment Labour is pretty confident of success. They claim that on the basis of the local figures in the constituency in the recent European elections - which were disastrous for Labour across most of Britain - they actually won in Glasgow North East.

But can Labour keep that up? The general rule in by-elections is the longer the sitting party waits, the more time it gives the challenger to gain the momentum to win.

A small footnote about my former Newsnight colleague David Kerr. He took voluntary redundancy from BBC Scotland last week to try to become the SNP candidate for Glasgow North East. But then last night, sadly for him, the SNP picked someone else, perhaps because Kerr was seen as Alex Salmond's preferred man.

I first came across Kerr when he was the SNP candidate in the Falkirk by-election of 2004, when I said in my commentary, rather cheekily: "David Kerr used to be editor of Newsnight Scotland, so he should be used to small audiences."

My producer was having kittens during the editing of my film, and begged me to change the line, fearing the wrath of humourless BBC bureaucrats in Glasgow. In the event, nobody complained, partly because my film didn't go out in Scotland... but also, of course, because there are no humourless BBC bureaucrats in Glasgow.

Indeed, I'm told his forthcoming departure for Spain lay behind his decision, last February, to step down as Treasurer of the Christian Socialist Movement, after two years in the job.

Ostrowski's Spanish plans were so far advanced that many people in Labour circles were rather surprised when it was suddenly announced that he was now Labour's man in Norwich North.

Presumably Ostrowski's academic plans will be abandoned if he is elected to Parliament on 23 July.

But if, as seems more likely, he loses the by-election then Madrid is still very much an option. I understand that in April Ostrowski told the university in Madrid that he wouldn't now be coming this autumn, but that he was still interested in coming in September 2010.
The university are keeping the MA place open for him for another year, and Ostrowski has until next July to decide whether to take up.

For now, a Labour spokesman says, "Chris is focussing all of his attention on the by-election."

"Luckily," says my source, "it was only one of the tame ones, that doesn't have much more than is in the public domain. Not one of the serious ones which say what a mess we're really in."

When was the last time a Parliamentary contest involved two leading candidates who are so young - a combined age of 55?

The Conservative contender in Norwich North, Chloe Smith, is only 27, while her Labour opponent, Chris Ostrowski, is just 28.

If either of them is elected in the by-election they will replace the Liberal Democrat MP Jo Swinson as the "baby" of the Commons. Ms Swinson is now 29.

You can watch my first first report from Norwich North on Newsnight on Tuesday 30 June 2009 at 10.30pm.

Talking to Newsnight in his first TV interview since he announced his resignation, Dr Gibson refuses to rule out the possibility of standing as an independent. He implies that his decision will partly depend on who Labour pick as their candidate to replace him.

The national Labour Party will tomorrow reduce the current shortlist of around 12-13 contenders down to three names. Members of the Norwich Labour Party are due to meet on Sunday to choose their candidate from these three.

Gibson is a popular figure in Norwich and if he does stand in the by-election, it would probably wreck any chance Labour has of keeping the seat. The Conservatives need a swing of just under six per cent to win Norwich North, an easy target in the current political climate.

An ICM poll in Norwich North commissioned by Norwich University and College Union gives the Tories a four per cent lead over Labour - 34 per cent to 30 per cent. The poll suggests the Lib Dems will simply be fighting Greens to avoid coming fourth, with the Lib Dems on 15 per cent and the Greens on 14 per cent.

I understand that senior Treasury officials are already trying to work out which items of expenditure they can delay and stall over the next few months, so that if the Conservatives come to power next spring the Treasury will already have a list of possible items which the new Chancellor George Osborne can then announce he will cancel altogether.

Indeed, I remember querying with Mr Bercow why his name was not even in the betting lists - the 40-1 was for the "others" category.

"If I were you I'd do something about that," I joked to Mr Bercow.

His name appeared in the lists the very next day, at around 6-1.
.

"For the first time in my life," admitted the Labour MP, "I voted for a Conservative today".

David Cameron inquired which of the Speaker candidates he meant.

"John Bercow," replied the MP.

"He doesn't count," said Mr Cameron.

A friend, Tom Fairbrother, has just e-mailed me to say that in 1995, when Sir George Young was first appointed to John Major's Cabinet, the Times leader described him as being as just about as left-wing as you can be without being in the Labour Party.

"Considering how good at redacting they are," suggests a senior Conservative, "why can't they just blank them out!"