The curse of Tony is getting a bit serious. He is blighting the political futures of Downing Street apparatchiks, who fondly imagined that working at the court of the Sun King would be a passport to Westminster. It is deeply dismaying to learn that his policy adviser Andrew Adonis has given up the idea of getting a safe seat, and ditto James Purnell. Working for the PM is a positive disadvantage when applying to constituencies. I've heard of Adonis, once a hack on the Observer who foolishly preferred politics to his trade, but this Purnell fellow is a bit of a mystery. Why does the Labour leader need advice of any kind from such nonentities?
And then there is the departure of dry, young Pat McFadden, the sole remaining member of John Smith's staff in No 10. He has walked the plank down to Millbank to join the general election team. There he will join Douglas Alexander, MP for Paisley South, who was shoehorned into his seat over McFadden's angry red head. Pat and the great undisgraced Peter Mandelson will make an excellent, harmonious team with the Brownites.
Equally mystifying is the job-swap between Phil Murphy, assistant general secretary and director of information for the Labour Party, and Lance Price, special adviser (media) to the PM. It is assumed in the Westminster village that Murphy is carrying the can for Millbank's many failures, because Blair cannot sack the general secretary, Margaret McDonagh, in the election run-up, eminently sensible though that may be. The ambitious Murphy has been punished with a £10,000 pay rise from the taxpayer, taking his reputed salary to £72,000.
You read it here first, in the edition of 5 June. Alastair Campbell's strategic withdrawal deeper into the Downing Street bunker was initially detected when he stopped appearing for the weekly Sunday lobby briefing. All is not what it seems, however. Ali discreetly keeps up a flow of stories to the "white commonwealth" - his key political editors in the press and the electronic media.
To Bournemouth for Rodney Bickerstaffe's farewell Unison conference. Few union leaders are held in such genuine affection by their members as "Bick". On the valedictory video, I reminisced about first meeting him 20 years ago. "You know, I'm a bastard," he offered. "Well, yes," I spluttered. "You've got to be a bit of a bastard to be a union official." "No, no," he replied. "A real bastard. A child born of unmarried parents." Nothing much you can say to that, except that it was a real joy when he discovered the rest of his family in Dublin last year; one of his Irish brothers was on the platform.
Tony Robinson, aka Baldrick, was compering. He invited up guest speakers, including "the man I beat into second place in the National Executive elections - Lord (Tom) Sawyer, Rodney's former deputy". As Sawyer made for the mike, Baldrick added: "Fancy being beaten by a tosser with a turnip!" In the dressing-room, Robinson stressed that he and the other new blood on the NEC will not be a pushover for No 10. We shall see.
"Nurse unupblown" famously cabled the journalist in Evelyn Waugh's Scoop. The latter-day version would be "undisgraced Mandelson unsnarled at by dog." The Northern Ireland Secretary bent down to pat a drug-sniffer dog at Ballymena police station. Sky, a seven-year-old labrador bitch, bared her teeth at him and growled. It must be true, because her RUC handler went on television to say so. "She doesn't like strangers getting too close," he said. I don't blame the gel.
The following morning, Mandy's abrasive press secretary, Tom Kelly, rang every media outlet in the province to deny the story. The second-greatest dog-lover in the Cabinet had not been snarled at. Unfortunately, Kelly was not there when it happened, and in his hurry to be Mandy's poodle he got the sex of the dog wrong. So the whole episode is being treated by the Belfast press as further evidence that the Ulster Secretary is "losing it".
The writer is chief political commentator for the Mirror
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