Clause 28, Thatcher's hate child for the gay community, is creating a real palaver at Westminster. The government first announced that its abolition would be a whipped vote, then backed down in the face of religious pressure, then caved in from that position in the face of a revolt by the PLP. But unreconstructed old Labour MPs are threatening to vote against the measure when it comes back to the Commons on 7 February. They claim to be getting serious earache in the clubs back home. Meanwhile, in the Upper House, Lord Whitty and the local government minister, Hilary Armstrong, read the riot act to 50 rebellious Labour peers. "Thith ithn't party bithness, it'th government bithness!" lisped Armstrong furiously.

Then why, they asked themselves, was she yelling at them?

Andrew Mackay, the permanently tanned shadow Ulster Secretary, went to the Northern Ireland Office somewhere in the bowels of the MI5 building on MilIbank for a briefing on the peace process with Peter Mandelson.

He found the de-disgraced minister on all fours on the carpet, playing with Bobby the dog. Mandy is so obsessed with the mutt that nobody has the heart to tell him that it is a Special Branch sniffer dog, which has been planted on him.

An engaging coded attack against new Labour in Ted Rowlands's statement of resignation to his local party in Merthyr Tydfil and Rhymney. Peter Mandelson makes no secret of his contempt for representative democracy, and we must assume he speaks for the Prime Minister. Ted, the slight but courageous Foreign Office minister who personally recaptured Anguilla for the Queen, said: "I have always drawn great strength from our representative system. There is the umbilical connection between constituency and Commons." It is probably wise that he is throwing in the towel at the next election. Such seditious talk will cost dear thereafter. Still, Ted has his forthcoming history of the Welsh Office to comfort him.

To a splendid 16th-century manor house owned by "the government" in deepest Sussex, for a two-day conference on the future of the European Union, attended by civil servants, politicians and some members of the fourth estate. Because of the iniquitous Chatham House rules (roughly translatable as eat all, sup all, say nowt), I can report nothing of the exciting proceedings. Not that they were particularly secret. The most interesting thing I learnt was that Tony Blair wishes he had read history rather than jurisprudence at Oxford. The better to fix his place in it?

In rather more modest surroundings, lunch with Mick Rix, the new general secretary of the train drivers' union, Aslef, which has just given the train operators Connex a bloody nose. Conversation turned to the next generation of TUC leaders. In a short space of time (by union standards), the movement is to lose the big four: Rodney Bickerstaffe of Unison, Bill Morris (TGWU), John Edmonds (GMB) and Sir Ken Jackson (AEEU). Moreover, the best talker of them all is quitting: Ken Cameron, the leader of the Fire Brigades Union, who advocated loosening the bonds with Labour. RoIy-poly, chain-smoking Rix, who has yet to announce his defection from Arthur Scargill's Socialist Labour Party, looks like a candidate for the front rank. I hear distinct echoes of the late, great Ray "Telegrams are flooding in from every depot!" Buckton.

BBC hacks are loudly bewailing Michael Cockerell's soft-focus spectacular on Blair's 1000 days. Apart from some archive footage, the programme was a sofa interview with the great helmsman, with brave questions from Cockerell such as: "Have you anything to tell the nation, Prime Minister?" Beeb staffers note that the show went out on the first day of Greg Dyke's reign as director-general. A hint that this is how Alastair Campbell likes things done?

The writer is chief political commentator for the "Mirror"

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