Nobody is safe. Millbank's vultures are circling over the oldies in vote-fat seats ahead of the election, picking off the vulnerable with the promise of a peerage. The latest target, I hear, is Giles Radice, the plummy-voiced Wykehamist MP for Durham North. He may not be so easy to shift. He looks like a lord, and talks like a lord, but he is also the euro-mad chairman of the Treasury Select Committee. I like the story of him campaigning in the pit rows of Chester-le-Street, my grandfather's birthplace. "May I rely on your veeowt on polling day?" he asks politely. "Sorry lad," growls his constituent. "We're Labour in this 'ouse."
Things must be coming to a pretty pass, because I have been urged by comrades in the PLP to go for Normanton, my home town. There are no circumstances in which I would wish to be an MP. But there's no vacancy anyway; Bill O'Brien has been reselected. And if the seat does suddenly become vacant, it should go to Ed "Brainbox" Balls, who may have helped engineer the economic miracle in his capacity as economics adviser to Gordon Brown, but is still trailing his gorgeous wife Yvette Cooper in the political stakes.
The love affair between the MoD top brass and Downing Street is becoming positively embarrassing. Tony Blair's fascination with war games made him an easy capture for the military. But government insiders now tell me that Sir Charles Guthrie, the Chief of Defence Staff (Balkan Iron Cross with Oak Leaf Cluster-Bomb), is discreetly advising his chums to vote Labour at the next election.
This is mission creep with a vengeance, and an interesting comment on the MoD ministerial team, who might as well be in uniform. Attention, Colonel Hoon! It also speaks volumes about the supine nature of the Defence Select Committee.
Yet more intelligence from No 4 Millbank, home of the BBC political department. On the day Andrew Marr was appointed political editor, a pool of executives telephoned every staffer on every political programme, no matter how menial, to say: "You must not speak to the press!" Naturally, the instruction was more honoured in the breach than the observance.
One of the few (for obvious reasons) funny stories about Marr remembers his serious bearing upon arriving at Westminster to write for the Scotsman. The lobby got very excited about a story that gulls were crapping on MPs as they sat with their Pimms on the terrace. Marr was furious. "I didn't come down here to write about seagull shit!" he huffed. Perhaps this is why he will be responsible for the two-ways - that is, blethering to the camera from outside No 10 - while his deputy, John Pienaar, does the more complicated "packages", which might involve forms of light entertainment.
My sympathy for Joe Ashton increases daily. After agreeing to stand down at the next election because his Thais do not suit, he now suffers the indignity of his autobiography being censored by the politically correct brigade. Having freely interlarded his memoirs with references to "lasses" and "wenches", the outgoing MP for Bassetlaw was told by his publisher, Macmillan, that they would have to go. "But that's how they talked in the Seventies!" he protested. Even worse, they wouldn't let him call the book Last of the Labour Wine. The title is now something like Red Rose Blues, which is as near meaningless as you can get.
Chris Mullin has not put aside his hair shirt on taking ministerial office in John Prescott's sprawling department. He refuses to take red boxes home, insisting on completing his work in the office. And he rejected the offer of a limousine, almost triggering a strike in the government car pool, where the drivers' mafia was most put out at the possible loss of a job. StiIl, at least he is not as puritanical as Peter Bradley, the former lobbyist who took the Wrekin off the Tories. MPs get a big car allowance, but he insisted on a London Transport bus pass. He got it, too.
The writer is chief political commentator for the Mirror
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