Clive Soley, the chairman of Labour's parliamentary party, was voted off the party's executive by MPs and MEPs last night in a snub to the Prime Minister's authority. The failure of Mr Soley to retain his place on the influential National Executive Committee will come as a blow to Tony Blair, who regards the MP as one of his chief allies in the House of Commons.Mr Soley was replaced by the former EastEnders actor and Labour MEP Michael Cashman ­ who has sat on the NEC in the past, in the members' section.Mr Soley was also beaten by the veteran left-wing MP Dennis Skinner in a run-off for two places in the members' section. The third member is Helen Jackson, the MP for Sheffield Hillsborough.Last night Millbank also announced the election of the left-wing Labour journalist and commentator Mark Seddon to the members' section of the NEC. Tony Robinson, the actor best known for his role as Baldric in Blackadder, received most votes from Labour Party members, amassing 29,771.The party's headquarters denied the failure to elect Mr Soley should be interpreted as a blow to New Labour.Mr Soley is well liked in the Commons. But he is regarded as a close ally of Mr Blair and the snub will be interpreted by many at Westminster as an act of defiance against the Labour leadership.

There are growing signs that Mr Blair could face criticism from left-wing MPs in this Parliament over his plans to make increasing use of the private sector in the NHS and other public services.The new NEC will start its work at the time of the Labour Party conference and Mr Soley will step down in the autumn.Mr Soley narrowly saw off a challenge to his chairmanship of the Parliamentary Labour Party earlier this year from the former Foreign Office minister Tony Lloyd. Although he managed to secure a modest margin of victory, the sizeable vote against him was seen as a protest against his close relationship to Downing Street.After the result was announced, Mr Soley promised to speak up for the back benches, warning that the support of rank and file MPs could not be taken for granted.. A proffesional assassin and his getaway driver were waiting for Jill Dando as she walked to the front door of her home, an Old Bailey jury was told yesterday. A proffesional assassin and his getaway driver were waiting for Jill Dando as she walked to the front door of her home, an Old Bailey jury was told yesterday.As the 37-year-old television presenter put her right hand out to the door, holding the keys, the gunman came up behind her and held her down towards the ground in a "human vice grip", Michael Mansfield QC told the court, opening the defence case in the trial of the man accused of her murder.The killer then pressed the muzzle of the gun to the left side of Miss Dando's head and fired a single shot in what was described as a "highly efficient" hit.

He then fled to a vehicle parked near by ­ possibly a Range Rover ­ and escaped."For Jill Dando to have been murdered by such precision shooting with a single muffled shot, it has to have been the work of a professional assassin," Mr Mansfield declared. "There are a number of hallmark features obvious from the beginning that tend to suggest that this is the most likely explanation."Mr Mansfield outlined his explanation of the killing, arguing that all the evidence suggested that the shooting, on 26 April 1999, had been carried out by professionals, not by the accused, Barry George, who denies murder."Barry George's case is not merely that he did not commit this crime, but that it was a crime committed in a professional manner by a professional hitman," argued Mr Mansfield.He dismissed the prosecution's case that unemployed Mr George, 41, had a fixation with celebrity and an unhealthy interest in firearms and had walked from his flat in Crookham Road, Fulham, south-west London, and shot dead the television presenter before fleeing on foot.He argued that nine witnesses who were present in Gowan Avenue, described as a "small narrow, Victorian suburban street", where Ms Dando was killed, had not seen "anything untoward, nor anyone suspicious" on the morning of the shooting."The most obvious explanation for the absence of anyone loitering near by is that they were not making themselves an object of attention and were secreted in a vehicle .. driven by an accomplice," he told the jury. The existence of a getaway driver in a nearby street "would also explain why the assailant was able in broad daylight to disappear with such ease and in a manner which provided the police with so few clues even after one year of investigation," he added.The killing itself involved the "maximum element of surprise" and as no one saw or heard anything "demonstrates a highly efficient operation", Mr Mansfield said.He pointed towards the professional way in which the killer "was able to press the muzzle of the gun right up to, and in contact with, the left side of her head, which also had the effect of silencing the weapon's discharge".Mr Mansfield said that although "we are not in a position to say exactly who the professional assassin was", there were at least two potential areas of Ms Dando's life that could offer an explanation.The first was the presenter's television appeal made on behalf of refugees from Kosovo. The appeal coincided with the Nato bombing of the headquarters of Serbian television and radio in Belgrade on 23 April 1999, in which up to 17 people died."Jill Dando herself by this stage had become one of the, if not the, public face of the BBC," said Mr Mansfield."She was seen to be personification and embodiment, publicly, of the BBC," he added.She was murdered three days after the bombing and there followed a series of telephone calls to the BBC claiming the shooting was carried out because of the Nato attack.In the autumn of 1999 the National Criminal Intelligence Service provided the police officer in charge of the murder investigation with an intelligence report suggesting that the killing was ordered by the notorious Serbian war criminal known as Arkan, the jury was told.The second possible explanation, according to the defence barrister, was Ms Dando's work in presenting the BBC television series, Crimewatch UK."Plainly an aggrieved individual who believed that this programme was itself providing an effective aid to police investigation and needed to be curtailed might consider, however misguidedly, that a literal warning shot across the bows was required," he said.The trial continues.. The case against the man accused of murdering Jill Dando lacks hard evidence and is "hanging by the merest of threads", a jury at the Old Bailey was told yesterday. The case against the man accused of murdering Jill Dando lacks hard evidence and is "hanging by the merest of threads", a jury at the Old Bailey was told yesterday.A professional assassin, rather than the man accused of the shooting ­ Barry George ­ was the most likely killer, Michael Mansfield QC told the court in his opening address for the defence.No one saw the murder, only one person out of 12 witnesses could positively identify Mr George, and the only piece of scientific evidence ­ a tiny gunpowder particle ­ may have been contaminated because of an "act of crass folly" by the police, said Mr Mansfield.Mr George, 41, denies shooting the 37-year-old presenter through the head with a converted pistol at her home in Fulham, south-west London, on 26 April 1999.Mr Mansfield rejected the prosecution's case, describing it as an "evidential edifice based upon a speck" of gunpowder, which measured half of 1,000th of an inch.He argued that the gunpowder found in a coat pocket at Mr George's flat in Fulham­ which the police say was similar to the residue found on the bullet used in the murder ­ was a common type of primer.

He said that in an act of "stupidity" before the coat was examined, it had been taken to a place where other evidence had been held that could have resulted in contamination. "Without it [the gunpowder evidence] the prosecution would have no case at all," he said.He also saidthere was no evidence that his client had the tools or knowledge to convert a blank firing pistol into a deadly weapon of the type used to kill Ms Dando ­ as is alleged.On the issue of identification, Mr Mansfield, said: "No one identifies this defendant as the gunman." Mr Mansfield said the shooting "was a crime committed in a professional manner by a professional hitman, planned and carefully executed".. Jeffrey Archer's victorious 1987 libel case would have "unravelled like a damaged sweater" if suspicions about him forging a crucial diary could have been investigated at the time, the Old Bailey was told yesterday. Jeffrey Archer's victorious 1987 libel case would have "unravelled like a damaged sweater" if suspicions about him forging a crucial diary could have been investigated at the time, the Old Bailey was told yesterday. Michael Hill, the QC who represented the Daily Star, which lost and paid £500,000 in damages, claimed the outcome would have been very different if the extent of the alleged deceit of Lord Archer of Weston-super-Mare had been known. The counsel said he never believed that one of the diaries the Tory peer produced for the High Court jury was genuine, but the rules and procedures of the law did not allow him to pursue the matter during the trial.On the 12th day of his trial for alleged perjury and forgery, the former Conservative Party deputy chairman sat in the dock, leaning forward to listen to Mr Hill as the QC recalled their dramatic courtroom confrontation 13 years and four months ago.Mr Hill spoke in the measured and precise tones of a barrister of 43 years' experience, his glance occasionally drifting over to Lord Archer. He said the diary now being produced as the genuine one by the prosecution was not the one given to the jury to consider at the 1987 trial.The diary produced then had been masked with sellotape and brown tape so that only one and half pages were visible. Mr Hill said that if Lord Archer's diary could have been proved to be bogus, his alibi for the night he is alleged to have had sex with Monica Coghlan, a prostitute, would have been exposed as a lie.He said: "It would have been like pulling wool out of a damaged sweater.

As you go on pulling it and pulling it the sweater unravels; the unravelling of that sweater is what I would have expected ... [But] in this case, whatever my suspicion had been, the rules of procedure would not have allowed me pursue this."Mr Hill said his suspicion was aroused by "other material which emerged in the case and other accounts given by Mr Archer which were inconsistent with what was on the page."Mary Archer made her third appearance at the Old Bailey yesterday since the start of her husband's trial. On the two previous occasions she spent just 15 minutes in court. Yesterday, she stayed until the lunch break when there was a very public and affectionate parting. Lady Archer posed obligingly for photos with her husband outside the front door She then kissed him before leaving in achauffeur-driven BMW. For days the court had heard tales of Lord Archer's alleged affairs, of how he had cheated both his wife and his principal mistress, Andrina Colquhoun, with other lovers, of how his staff had to swap around photographs at his London flat overloooking the Thames, depending on whether the mistress or wife was staying the night.Lady Archer had not been in the courtroom to listen to that, and she was not in the courtroom yesterday when his legal team made much of his supposedly idyllic marriage during the 1987 case. Mr Hill said it was portrayed "as a happy, mutually supportive, mutually trusting, good marriage".Roy Amlot QC, appearing for Lord Archer's fellow accused, Ted Francis, read the jury the summing up of the 1987 case by Mr Justice Caulfield: "Remember Mary Archer in the witness box Your vision of her probably will never disappear.