If you really want to know what's going on, don't bother with spin-doctors and political advisers. They are usually too young and too stupid. Instead, talk to the Whitehall pool of drivers or Westminster bar staff. The drivers invariably know if their minister is for the chop, and the barmen (as they mostly are) know about the business of parliament. They have to sort out the duty rotas, which are far more important than legislation.

So I am inclined to believe them when they say that the Commons will rise for the Christmas recess on 14 December, little more than a week of parliamentary days from the Queen's Speech on 6 December, itself the latest date for this occasion in more than 50 years. This is laziness on a grand scale. More importantly, what does it tell us about the date of the general election? Opinion is divided. Some MPs argue that it points to May 2001, because the government has run out of things to do. Others insist that Blair will go on and on, Thatcher-wise, to a full five-year term. Except that she never did.

My brass would be on next spring, except that Millbank is in such a state of woeful unpreparedness. All kinds of horror stories are emerging from Labour HQ. It seems the staff are terrified of talking to the party general secretary, Margaret McDonagh, in case it is one of her explosive off-days. And Blair hasn't the nerve to kick her upstairs into the Lords until the election is over.

The contest for the chair of the Parliamentary Labour Party (reported by my colleague Charlie Whelan on page 35) bids fair to make the Speakership election a model of simplicity. My advice is to rule out the challenge from Andrew Mackinlay because he supported Sir George Young for Speaker. No backbencher is going to vote for a man seen nodding vigorously when the hapless Helen Jackson spoke so unmovingly in support of the Tory toff. But I can reveal that the prospect of a Frank Dobson candidacy is unnerving No 10. "My God, he would win," is the reaction. Expect, therefore, Dobbo to become Lord Muckyjoke of Camden ere long.

My erstwhile colleague Peter McMahon, the political editor of the Mirror, has gone home to be spin-doctor to Scotland's new First Minister, Henry McLeish. I assume that his salary is at the upper end of the £40,000-£85,000 range that was publicly disclosed. Good luck to the boy. But will he have the power to persuade Henry to change his hairstyle? At present, it is circa-1970s Kevin Keegan-style regimented curls (what's left of them). When McLeish was at Westminster, it was assumed that his hair was protected by a preservation order. North of the border, can it still be Grade II listed?

As predicted here, Downing Street is giving short shrift to Linda McDougall's forthcoming biography of Cherie Blair. Friends of the First Lady are being told not to speak to her. A bit late, brothers. They already have. And they are not very complimentary about Tony, who doesn't quite measure up to Cherie's earlier boyfriends. Still, McDougall can breathe more easily now that Mo Mowlam has dropped her threat of a libel action over something she wrote in this paper. To whom was this threat made? With consummate lack of sisterly comradeship, to Linda's husband, Austin Mitchell MP.

One good thing may come out of the unseemly scramble for the Speakership: a decent meal, followed by conversation about how to do in the rivals next time. Sir Alan Haselhurst, the defeated Deputy Speaker, suggested to his fellow contender John McWilliam that there are enough losers from the Michael J Martin debacle to form an all-party Commons dining club. The dozen members of the Westminster flops could have endless discussions about how to undermine Mr Speaker.

The Tory Baroness Trumpington fends off nosy inquiries about her choice of title with the robust question: "Should I have chosen Six Mile Bottom, the other village nearest my place of birth?"

Paul Routledge is chief political commentator for the Mirror

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