Of further and better interest, as the lawyers say, is the interest shown by Michael Howard in becoming chairman of the Commons security and intelligence committee. Mr Something-of-the-Night discreetly signalled his interest in succeeding Tom King after the election, and even spoke in a debate on SpyCom's annual report. So intense was Tory lobbying for the post that Tony Blair had to pull rank by giving the job to an outgoing Labour cabinet minister, Ann Taylor.
Howard was duly punished by being made shadow chancellor, the fifth to be lined up against Gordon Brown. He obviously feels uncomfortable about taking over from Francis Maude. The day after he got the job, Howard pulled out of a live session on Radio 5 Live's Sunday Service, jointly presented by the New Statesman's Charlie Whelan, who used to be Brown's spin-doctor. If he can't cope with the monkey, what chance has he got with the organ-grinder?
Mr Double-Disgrace, aka Peter Mandelson, sat splendidly alone in the MPs' gallery during the one-day recall of parliament, no doubt so the great helmsman could draw comfort from his steady, admiring gaze. He also ostentatiously took notes, and later delivered a speech, widely interpreted as a job application, calling for a European security supremo. How suitable he would be for the job, MPs mused. There is an MI5 file on Mandy, according to the renegade officer David Shayler. More to the point, the spook expert Robin Ramsay has long maintained that young Peter could have been an asset of MI6 through his work at the Foreign Office-financed British Youth Council in the 1970s. Fellow delegates to the Moscow-inspired World Festival of Youth in Cuba in 1978 certainly wondered whose side he was on.
Gorgeous George Galloway made such a good speech in the terrorism debate that I hesitate to repeat the ungracious remarks I heard later by fellow Labour MPs, most entertaining of which was: "George is still single because he can't find a woman to love him as much as he loves himself."
My snout in Rothermere Towers is so adamant on this that I have to believe him - or at any rate give the story an outing: the Home Secretary, David Blunkett, rings the Daily Mail every Sunday to ask if there is anything he can help them with.
Unquestionably true is his authorship of a new book, Politics and Progress, another of those tomes about "democracy in a civil society", jointly published with Demos, the tedium factory. Blunkett is planning a launch bash at the party conference to reach the widest possible audience of people who might vote for him in a future leadership election.
Er . . . just a minute. What happened to the convention that cabinet ministers do not write books? Since new Labour took power, only Chris Smith, the Culture Secretary, has been allowed to publish while in office. A collection of his speeches, Creative Britain, bombed and is trickling through the remainder market. Blunkett's book is, by all accounts, a pitch for succeeding Tony Blair. And he still claims he doesn't want to stuff Gordon Brown.
MPs are genuinely anxious about the Queen Mother's health and loyally hope that her rally will continue. The reason? If she dies after the House reassembles on 16 October, they will get another week off on top of their paltry 80-day summer recess, because parliament will be suspended for mourning.
Politico's is publishing a Dictionary of Labour Biography, edited by Greg Rosen of the engineering union AEEU. Contributors are not being paid, as most of the proceeds are going to the Samaritans. Gerald Kaufman was approached to write a couple of entries but, on discovering Politico's parsimony, replied: "Canvassing for the Labour Party is the only thing I do for love. Everything else I do for money." The entry on Kaufman himself will make interesting reading - unless, that is, it somehow fails to survive the final sieving process.
Paul Routledge is chief political commentator for the Mirror
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