He may not have a people's poet but he has a people's general. Staff and officers at the Ministry of Defence are fuming that General Sir Charles Guthrie, chief of the defence staff, has fallen under the spell of Commander-in-Chief Tony Blair. Guthrie should be looking after his own; instead, MoD insiders grumble, he is pandering to the Prime Minister, whose military adventurism is no doubt attractive to the top brass.
I suppose it was only to be expected. Nato's Balkan war - as Blair finally, and correctly, described it at PM's Questions (to the dismay of his media fusiliers) - has softened the combatants' brains. At a meeting of the Parliamentary Labour Party, Robin Cook complained that he couldn't be as nasty to the opposition as he wished.
"I'm in a straitjacket, talking to the Tories. I have to be po-faced and represent the national interest, not the party interest," he mourned.
But the Foreign Secretary urged back-benchers to use their freedom of manoeuvre to accuse Conservatives of manifesting double standards and a lack of patriotism. "That's fine by me," he added, singling out for special treatment his shadow, Michael Howard, and the pipsqueak MP Crispin Blunt, a Tory member of the Defence Select Committee, who has called for the resignation of the people's general.
Common sense has, however, broken out in the most unexpected place: the Green Party. Their hostility to the war is winning support from Labour dissidents, particularly in southern England, which might just translate into a seat in the European Parliament. "We have been inundated by calls from Labour supporters who are angry about Blair's hawkish warmongering stance," bubbles the Greens' spokesperson Tanya Reed. "We're only too happy to have them."
Jean Lambert in London and Caroline Lucas in the South-east look best placed to benefit from the anti-war protest. They need an estimated 8 per cent share of the votes. I've a damn good mind to vote Green myself on 10 June.
The Tories certainly know how to celebrate. Immediately after new Labour suffered its most damaging Commons revolt, over welfare reform, the shadow social services secretary, lain Duncan-Smith, was wheeled by a Central Office minder up to the Press Gallery bar in Westminster. Trebles all round? Not a bit of it. Duncan-Smith, a Sandhurst graduate and former Guards officer, ordered a half of lager and two Panadol. What would the regiment say? The lobby correspondents left him to nurse his headache in peace. By the way, Nick Wood, the Tory spokesman hired from the Times, won the Annie's Bar sweep, guessing to within two votes the size of the rebellion.
To Foyle's literary lunch to celebrate the publication of John Redwood's political tract, The Death of Britain?. I mistrust book titles that end with a question mark: either writer or publisher has theological doubts about the proposition being advanced. But the shadow trade secretary, pretending to be "humbled" by the turnout, more or less ignored his book, saying that he wrote it quite a long time ago and couldn't remember everything that was in it.
Instead he made a spirited application to keep his job in the pending Tory reshuffle. William Hague, he said, is a bright, intelligent and brave man, "and anything he does is clearly correct". When the Sky TV political editor, Adam Boulton, made suggestive remarks about Redwood fighting for the leadership again, Vulcan shook his head vigorously, his pointy ears scything the air. One story doing the rounds is that Redwood is already looking for a job and may succeed Tim Melville-Ross next year as director of the far-out Institute of Directors.
There was a highly vocal contingent of Conservative wrinklies from his Wokingham constituency at the Foyle's lunch, some sporting the "£" badges of the anti-euro fanatics. They seemed to think their MP is a bit of a dangerous leftie.
The writer is chief political commentator for the "Mirror"
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