Robert Harris was once a fan of Tony Blair. He even offered to use his millions made from smash-hit novels to buy the New Statesman from its current proprietor, the saintly Geoffrey Robinson, and turn it into the house magazine of the Blairistas. But it seems his loyalty to Peter Mandelson supersedes any affection he might have for the great helmsman. Doing the television rounds after publication of the Hammond report, an enraged Harris hissed "off the record" to the BBC: "Blair will live to regret this! He has lost his one true friend and protector!" He went on to predict a Gordon Brown takeover within two or three years.

How, then, does that square with the Harris camp's view, expressed over dinner a few nights ago, that Mandy will return as Foreign Secretary a couple of years hence? They cannot really imagine that Brown will give his seditious former ally a job.

Poor Peter. He is so confused these days that when Millbank requested a pre-election blurb from candidates about themselves, Mandy sent his handwritten offering to the office of Sir Malcolm Rifkind in Edinburgh. It detailed his three ministerial appointments, but not his disgraced departure from two of them. Rifkind, president of the Scottish Tories, reads the document to public meetings. "Of course we know he suffers from a lack of memory," he sniggers.

Baroness Jay and Tessa Jowell threw a bash for the sisterhood on International Women's Day, coincidentally also Budget Day. The wimmin were ecstatic about the Chancellor's give-away measures for mothers. However, the atmosphere went sour when they noticed that Harriet Harman, who had done so much to persuade Brown to open his purse, was absent. Not invited, because the haughty baroness can't stand her.

Another of Mandy's friends (an endangered species, these days), the Hon Tristram Hunt, has slagged off the BBC's On the Record political programme. Teenage Hunt, who once worked two days a week for Blair, and is a "fellow" of the Institute for Public Policy Research, wants John Humphrys's show to investigate the politics of America's nu metal bands, although he can name only two.

The Westminster press gallery committee, a body that makes Stalin's politburo look like a model of open government, has been taken over by allegedly "New Lobby" political correspondents with modish ideas about transparency. But a proposal to publish the minutes of its meetings was vetoed after objections from the decidedly Old Lobby chairman, John Deans (Daily Mail). His reason: "They might get into diaries." Like this one, presumably. The real objection, it seems, is an impending row over Deansie's plan to rip out the old oak telephone boxes in the lower gallery of the Commons to make room for more office accommodation. This idea has provoked intense hostility from conservationists.

Footnotes to the Tory spring conference in Harrogate. Central Office dropped a mighty clanger by calling two separate briefings for the Sunday press: one for men and one for women. The hairy-chested brigade were briefed on William Hague's chilling line that "Britain will become a foreign land if Blair is re-elected", while the girlies - Jo Dillon of the Independent on Sunday, Julia Hartley-Brewer of the Sunday Express and Gaby Hinsliff of the Observer - were punted a soft story about overseas development or Ffion's hairstyle or some such. Some very cross Rosy Riveters are planning revenge on Bob Seely, the party official responsible. Hartley-Brewer, who regards apparatchiks as a light snack, was particularly incensed, whinnying her wrath through the hotel lobby.

Also seen at the forum centre: Ann Widdecombe, muttering imprecations at the table where copies of her novel, The Clematis Tree, were stacked for signing. "I shall write to my publishers. It is an outrage. They owe me a penny for every book . . ." I heard, before moving quickly on.

Paul Routledge is the chief political commentator for the Mirror

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