Who, it is being asked in the Commons bars, would have an interest in upstaging Chancellor Gordon Brown and his comprehensive spending review? The first editions of the broadsheet papers on Monday 17 July led with previews of Ir'n Broon's calculating generosity. They all changed to follow the Times and Sun stories about a leaked memo. Something similar happened on Wednesday 19 July, the day after the announcement itself. Some source the leak to a bloke named Bill, who quit the No 10 press office to work for the Tories. I think that extremely unlikely. Doesn't Ir'n have other enemies, closer to home?
Also in the bars, much speculation about two Westminster elections. The first is for chair of the Parliamentary Labour Party, triggered by the decision of the maverick Andrew Mackinlay to stand against the incumbent Clive Soley, a passive smoker of Blairism. It is widely, if unfairly, assumed that he is a stalking-horse and that the real anti-establishment candidate will appear nearer the election in November. Tony Lloyd, the former Foreign Office minister and chairman of the trade union group of MPs, is strongly tipped. But now I hear that Nigel Griffiths, the former consumer affairs minister, has been approached by a number of parliamentary private secretaries to stand. The not very shy member for Edinburgh South is chuffed, and will probably throw his bonnet in the ring.
The other contest is for the speakership. A lot of very silly names have been put forward. The loudest groan is reserved for "Ming" Campbell, foreign affairs spokesman for the Liberal Democrats, who (his supporters say) has the support of the great helmsman. He certainly has pomposity in spades. I still think John McWilliam, the chairman of committees and an independent-minded fellow, would be a wise choice. But Dr David Clark, the former Cabinet Office minister, is evidently close to declaring. Clark wrote a biography of Victor Grayson, the pioneer socialist MP who disappeared without trace. Vic Feather, the late TUC general secretary, was actually named Victor Grayson Keir Hardie Feather, in memory of the great man. Not many people knew that, until now.
Paul Farrelly, the Observer business journalist, has survived a legal action by an embittered rival, and will be Labour candidate for the safe seat of Newcastle-under-Lyme. He takes over from Llin Golding, the widow of John Golding, the Post Office engineers' leader and hammer of the left on the Labour NEC in the Eighties. Memorably, he refused to support watering down the party's "suicide note" manifesto in 1983. "I know it's rubbish," he said. "But we're going to get beat, so we might as well get beat on the rubbish, and then we can start again."
The Oz papers are full of it. Cherie Blair is to represent the Aborigines in a human rights court case against the Australian government. Perhaps she will learn to speak Oz like her husband, who, because he learnt English in a Melbourne playground, still cannot say "it". Have you not noticed? He says "oeht". Fair dinkum.
A footnote to the mystery of Marx's rediscovered cigar case (see this column, 3 July), in which a lock of hair from the Russian revolutionary Stepniak was found. Stepniak, real name Sergei Mihailovich Stepniak-Kravchinsky, fled across Europe after assassinating the chief of police in St Petersburg in 1878. He settIed in London, where his friends included William Morris, Oscar Wilde and George Bernard Shaw. He made a career as a nihilist, difficult to do these days, although one does one's best. Alas, he died under the wheels of the 10.20 from Hammersmith while crossing the line "deep in thought" in 1895. Kropotkin, Eleanor Marx and Keir Hardie made speeches at Waterloo station before his body was cremated in Woking. I am indebted to David Walsh, the Labour leader of Redcar and Cleveland council, for this valuable information.
The writer is chief political commentator for the Mirror
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