David Blunkett regards critics of his anti-terrorism bill, which makes Draco look like Mr Chips, as "naive". He also dismisses the home affairs correspondents of the national press as "negative". He has deigned to meet them only twice since becoming Home Secretary. In turn, they regard him as dodgy on detail. Which is presumably why one of his junior ministers, John Denham or Beverly Hughes, is put up to brief on the bill.

Interestingly, Blunkett's remarks on the test of Britishness were first recorded with Guto Harri for the BBC World Service in early November. The full text was offered to two newspapers, but it made no impact. Only when the story was re-offered on the eve of the publication of reports on riots in northern cities did anyone bite, and then only the cash-strapped Independent on Sunday.

What kind of comradeship can Paul Marsden expect from the Liberal Democrats, now that he has defected to them from Labour? The Home Office PPS Ivan Henderson, all 5ft 4in of him, approached Marsden in the Strangers' Bar during the wee small hours, and improved his grasp of Anglo-Saxon. Marsden's Lib Dem minders, the space cadet Lembit Opik and a Welsh noddy called Matthew Green, swiftly made their excuses and left. But at least the Lib Dems accepted Marsden. I hear the Tory whips discussed what to do if he approached them. At all costs, keep him out, they decided.

Henderson's remarks to Marsden, complete with asterisks, duly appeared in the Mail on Sunday. As did those of the Chief Whip, Hilary Armstrong, on an earlier occasion. How much is the MoS paying Marsden, people are asking. If nothing, he is a fool. If much, no wonder he has just moved into a £300,000 house.

Channel 4 is making an ambitious two-part documentary on the life and times of Mo Mowlam, to be screened in conjunction with the publication of her memoirs. It is to be hoped that it will be more revelatory than her column in the Sunday Mirror, which disclosed the other day that the former secretary of state for Northern Ireland had bought a new vest.

Seasonal considerations apart, wild horses will not drag from me the identity of the Labour MP who observed of the Prime Minister: "He is so self-important that he really believes he is humble."

Austin Mitchell MP has fathered a Christmas collection of Yorkshire jokes, which he claims is heading the bestseller list at Politico's. Sample: a bore on a train pesters the Tyke celebrity Richard Whiteley. "I know thee," he says. "Thou were at Giggleswick school." "True," grunts Whiteley from behind his Yorkshire Post. "What's tha bin doing since?" asks the bore. Mitchell is also writing a book about New Zealand, where he was once an academic. Penguin has asked him to tone it down. How did he find something controversial about the Kiwis?

James Purnell, the pretty-boy Downing Street apparatchik who inherited (sorry, that should read "won in a fair and open selection contest") Tom Pendry's safe Labour seat of Stalybridge and Hyde, likes to think he bears a more than passing resemblance to Steve McQueen, a man described by Frank Sinatra as "absolutely the greatest zeitgeist guy. Ever." Well, we all have these fantasies. But Purnell, I am informed by an agent of the sisterhood, has a photograph of the Hollywood heart-throb over his bed.

Finally, a Christmas competition on the Treasury's famous five tests. Except that this one is about football. Which team is supported by (a) Gordon Brown, (b) his economics adviser, Ed Balls, (c) his aide Ed Miliband, (d) his Paymistress-General, Dawn Primarolo, and (e) his former spin-doctor Charlie Whelan? Entries will be opened on 13 January, and the first correct entry will receive a copy of Andy McSmith's hilarious novel about new Labour, Innocent in the House.

Paul Routledge is chief political commentator for the Mirror

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