It looks like a plot, and it talks like a plot, so it must be a plot. "Friends" of Peter Mandelson have told their friends in the media that the redisgraced former Ulster secretary will "get" his tormentors. Chief in his sights are Sir Richard Wilson, the Cabinet Secretary, and Lord Irvine, the Lord Chancellor. They sat on the bench of the kangaroo court that sent him skipping. Now, mysteriously, the Sunday Times, which printed Mandy's apologia, discovers Derry Irvine's unwise invitation to lawyers to shell out for Labour's election campaign. And "Jug Ears" Wilson's controversial dinner with the Hinduja brothers is disinterred.

Revenge is wonderful to behold but, if it is ever proven, Labour's National Executive, which will shortly take total control over election candidates, may have something unpleasant to say. "We've told him three times to shut up," snarled a junior minister in the Sports and Social Club. "If we find out . . ."

For whatever reason, MPs keep coming up to me with fresh Mandy tales. The latest is that, just before the mini-recess, he was woefully snubbed by fellow backbenchers (oh, you have no idea how that sounds) in the Members' Lobby during a late-evening division. They studiously examined their shoes or stared fixedly ahead to avoid making eye contact. But folksy Steve Byers, the Trade Secretary, has volunteered to speak in HartIepool during the election. Other ministers find they have urgent business elsewhere.

A further mystery arises from a reader's letter. Mandy's father, Major Tony Mandelson of the First Royal Dragoons, claimed to have been the first soldier to liberate occupied Denmark. A soldier who undoubtedly was there has no recollection of Mandelson pere leading the rescue column. Like father, like son?

The Tory whips' mafia of the Major years is poised to make a comeback, which will not be very welcome to the toffee-nosed James Arbuthnot, Hague's weak chief whip. Derek Conway has secured re-election in Edward Heath's Old BexIey and Sidcup seat, and Andrew Mitchell - the favourite to become keeper of the black book had he hung on to his Nottingham constituency - returns from Sir Norman Fowler's Sutton Coldfield redoubt. Greg Knight, a former deputy chief whip, is a retread in Yorkshire East. A fearsome trio. Expect the old Etonian Arbuthnot to seek fresh pastures, says my Tory snout.

To Glasgow, for the "spring" conference of the Labour Party, easily the most shambolic I have attended in more than 30 years. New Labour at war with Nova Scotia, organisationally speaking, is not a sight for the faint-hearted. Still, it was pleasing to hear the local wit. Scotland's First Minister, Henry McLeish, is known as McCliche, and his supporters as McLeishites (which requires saying out loud). His recent remark that something "beggars description" brought the reply that it almost "augurs belief". He unwisely offered to the Scottish Parliament a desire to use against his enemies an unparliamentary word beginning with H and ending with Y, which prompted a veteran Scot Nat to shout "Henry!". McLeish meant hypocrisy.

The Sydney Opera House lookalike shed by the Clyde in which the conference was held proved no more hospitable than Holyrood. All the bars were closed - and this a mile from the nearest boozer. There was no food and only one coffee shop, and the conference hotel cost £125 a night without breakfast, courtesy of Millbank's negotiating incompetence. The few MPs who turned up got misty-eyed about Blackpool, a sure sign that Glasgow can kiss goodbye to hosting the annual conference.

In his keynote (aren't they all?) speech, Tony Blair castigated cynics in the press. There were immediate moves to form a Lobby Cynics Group, shot down by the veteran David Healy who growled: "Na. People would just join it for what they could get out of it."

Paul Routledge is the chief political commentator for the Mirror and a biographer of Gordon Brown and Peter Mandelson

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