The vexed issue of Tony Blair's alleged agreement to stand down during his second term to give Gordon Brown a bash at the premiership is about to be disinterred by Jim Naughtie of Radio 4's Today programme. His forthcoming book, sold for a reputed £300,000, takes a fine toothcomb to the relationship between Nos 10 and 11 Downing Street. I doubt he has got very far, because the Chancellor has definitely not co-operated with the project, nor has the Prime Minister. For what it's worth, my Treasury snouts still insist that there was a deal, but Brown is not naive enough to believe that Blair will keep his word.

A Labour MP at the New Statesman's Lunch for London asked me exactly this question: would Tony hand over the reins in a couple of years? Alas, no. Well, not unless Cherie tells him to.

The good news is that Ir'n Broon has persuaded Angie Forrester - aka Lady Whitty, the wife of the former Labour Party general secretary - to work for him. As a networker, she outclasses Blair's Anji Hunter any day of the week.

To summer parties and bone-headed bouncers. Carlton Television threw a bash in a marquee at Westminster, and the security guards refused to admit the Labour MP Jane Griffiths, who had an invitation, because she brought her husband. They had earlier dished out the same treatment to Michael Ancram, who wanted his PA with him. It is not very wise to send the ex-chairman of the Conservative Party off in a huff, followed by a member of the ruling party who was a Russian linguist in the service of her government.

Hot from the blistering heat on the Commons terrace comes Jean Corston MP to deny that she is the Blairite candidate for the chairmanship of the Parliamentary Labour Party. You cannot trust anybody in this place. I had been given this gobbet of information only half an hour earlier in Strangers' Bar. Anyway, she is, and it would be a first for a gel to get the job - though the Downing Street poodle incumbent, Clive Soley, might be regarded as a bit of an old woman.

An unpromising tome comes from David Trimble, the leader of the Ulster Unionist Party, with the catchy title Raising Up a New Northern Ireland. He is launching the book over devil's buttermilk (as Ian Paisley would say) at Politico's bookshop, but it's a bit much resigning from his post as First Minister at Stormont just to draw attention to a compilation of speeches and articles from 1998-2000. What next? David Burnside's Sermon on the Mount?

To the deconsecrated St John's Church in Smith Square, SW1, for a determinedly rationalist memorial service for Tony Bevins, the awkward squad political editor of several papers, and his wife, Mishtu, who died just before him. The congregation - 95 % of them white - experienced some difficulty in belting out a stirring rendition of the hymn "Nkosi Sikelele Africa" in Zulu. John Prescott was the best speaker, with a "take care, lad, wherever you are" address. Peter Mandelson sat ostentatiously in the front of the back section, but vanished somewhere around the embarrassed singing of "Blueberry Hill" (led by Mo Mowlam and Professor Peter Hennessy, arm in arm and swaying from side to side), presumably through the trapdoor whence he came.

Not even I believe this, but that doesn't stop the story circulating at Westminster that Gisela Stuart, the ex-health minister, was dropped in the post-election reshuffle because No 10 simply forgot about her. I rather think she was undone by her smirk on live TV when Blair was getting the third-degree from Sharron Storer outside a Birmingham hospital during the election campaign.

Jim Mortimer, Labour's former general secretary, appeals to supporters of Liz Davies, the former NEC member, not to follow her out of the party. Unfortunately, he makes his plea in Political Newsletter, the organ of the Islip Unity Group, set up after the dissolution of the Communist Party of Great Britain. Slogan: "We are committed to Communist and Left Unity."

Paul Routledge is chief political commentator for the Mirror

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