War may have taken the Afghans by surprise, but the Tories converging on Blackpool for their conference were equally ill-prepared. As the bombers went in, the shadow foreign secretary, Michael Ancram, was stuck in a Virgin train "somewhere in Middle England", thought to be the Walsall Triangle. Bernard Jenkin, the shadow defence secretary, was on the rattler from Manchester, looking ill at ease as hacks heard the news on their mobile phones.
Nor was stormy Blackpool the right weather for Jenkin, who is a naturist. In this, he takes after his father, Patrick, who was energy secretary during the miners' strike of 1974, when he urged the nation to clean their teeth in the dark to save electricity. Tabloid snappers found his house lit up like the Lusitania.
Conservative Central Office was also derailed by the collapse of Railtrack. Eric Pickles, the circumferential transport spokesman (his bulk makes it difficult to call him "shadow" anything), could not be found for interview. Officials suggested that Channel 4 News film the text of party policy on the Tory website.
And when lain Duncan Smith tried to make a statement on the war to camera at the Tory agents' reception in the Imperial Hotel, he was shown the door by the black-tied constituency tyros enforcing their "no reptiles" rule. IDS had to be interviewed in the noisy hotel foyer.
The conflict must be serious. Hostilities have diminished MPs' gargantuan appetite for air travel. A number have dropped out of Commonwealth Parliamentary Association freebies (sorry, that should read "study tours") to Trinidad and Tasmania in the coming days.
With the return of parliament, lobby correspondents using the Commons gym fear a repeat of the Donald Anderson show. On one recent occasion, a well brought-up young gentleman from the tabloids was shocked to see the 62-year-old chairman of the foreign affairs select committee strip naked in the changing room before executing a series of "star jumps". Bits of him were flying everywhere. My informant made his excuses and left.
A curious veteran wandered down to the British Army Museum the other day and asked if he could see the exhibits on the Afghan wars. He was told: "We haven't got any yet."
Ken Livingstone is turning his back on his old union mates. As his £100m glass palace takes shape across the river from the Tower of London, the mayor has rebuffed a plea for talks from the newly formed Greater London Authority union forum. He sent a snooty letter, saying he regularly meets the south-east region of the TUC. But workers belong to unions, not the TUC, and the forum claims to represent thousands in Ken's vast empire.
True, it also contains some serious headbangers such as Geoff Martin of Unison, Pat Sikorski of the RMT and Mick Shaw of the Fire Brigades Union. But these were the very people who supported his renegade candidacy against Frank Dobson, the official Labour contender.
What Livingstone and the TUC both fear is an "unofficial", London-wide trade union grouping. That could put the cat among the pigeons, which the mayor is anyway trying to starve out of Trafalgar Square.
Postscript to Brighton. The twice- disgraced former minister has taken to circulating press releases headed "From the Rt Hon Peter Mandelson", as if he were somehow still in office, rather than just one member of the largely ceremonial Privy Council. Mandy's message to his adoring public, at a fringe meeting organised by the Independent (his house journal), was: "This is not a war. It is a military campaign." Phew, what a relief!
With his unerring instinct for losing, Mandy has now fixed his sights on supplanting Livingstone in 2004. He cannot have talked to London Labour MPs lately. They are terrified of a pasting for the government at the local elections next May.
Paul Routledge is chief political commentator for the Mirror. Lynton Charles returns next week
