The scene is Darlington station. The time is Friday morning. There are lots of policemen and dogs (none of them for petting) about, plus a number of government limousines. Tory Central Office staffers, up north for consultations on William Hague's lock-'em-up speech to the Scottish party conference, gasp in disbelief as the first-class carriage disgorges Tony Blair practically hand in hand with Peter Mandelson.

If the Downing Street guidance is to be believed, there isn't going to be a Cabinet reshuffle this summer. So what had the Likely Lads been talking about during the three-hour journey? The delights of the Durham countryside? Pull the other one. It was either a prolonged character assassination of the Cabinet or a discussion about the date of the election. Blair could not decide that without Mandy.

Speaking of polling day, the despatch of Alastair Campbell to the back room of No 10 has fuelled speculation that the election could come this autumn, enabling new Labour to call off the party conference and wrong-foot the Conservatives.

Some questions are being asked at Westminster about the undisgraced Ulster Secretary's new flat in fashionable west London. How much is the taxpayer paying to refurbish the place with bullet-proof floors, windows, bathroom and kitchen? Will he pay any of the money back when he comes home from Hillsborough to "win" the election? We must presume that Mandy didn't know he was going to Northern Ireland when he bought a pad needing extensive renovation that would qualify for public funds because of his security needs.

And so to the Shaun Woodward question. Labour Party barons in the regions are privately saying they do not want the renegade ex-Tory MP dumped on them in the last few days before the election. Safe seats will be in short supply. Why not give him a peerage and the promise of a government job?

I had never thought of Woodward as an original thinker, but he plans to bolster his political credibility by co-authoring a new Labour manifesto with, wait for it, the ex-minister Peter Kilfoyle and the Millbank fixer Fraser Kemp. Oh, and John Cryer, the brightest of the 1997 intake, is in there, too, depending on what the pamphlet says. His uncompromising socialist dad, the late Bob Cryer, will be revolving in his grave.

My snout Charles Murray, who was at school with Andrew Smith, the dynamic Chief Secretary to the Treasury, informs me that his nickname was Hadeus, not Hideous as it became corrupted at Oxford. And far from being an obscure middle name, it is simply his initials - ADS - turned into a soubriquet. How boring, although perhaps appropriate. Smith grew his hair just long enough to stay within the school rules at Reading Grammar. Now that I can believe.

The cigar case given to Friedrich Engels by his friend Karl Marx in the 1890s has reappeared, together with a mysterious lock of hair. It has been donated to the Marx Memorial Library in Clerkenwell, east London. The case, a handsome affair inlaid with cut and polished stones in various shades of brown and green malachite, with two leather pouches inside lined with purple silk, was discovered among the papers of John Burns, a radical socialist and leader of the 1889 dock strike, half a century after Marx presented it to Engels. Burns was given the case on one of his frequent visits to Engels' home at 122 Regents Park Road, north London.

Burns also left a lock of hair identified as coming from the head of the Russian revolutionary Sergei Stepniak-Kravchinsky, who wrote books with catchy titles such as The Career of a Nihilist.

I am indebted to the MML Bulletin for this fascinating story, as well as the information that a piece of Lenin's lino approximately four inches square will set me back £100, whereas a glass paperweight of the Soviet hero costs only £8.50.

The writer is chief political commentator for the Mirror

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