The Premier drops in, Big Mac risks one Big Gordie joke and Tim Allan avoids a tight spot

To Brighton - and a dozen-strong cabinet posse at the Trade Union Congress, led by Brother Blair on a rare personal visit to Britain. His driver kept the engine idling, the PM fleeing the general council dinner after the salmon mousse, but before the chicken in bacon, to catch a plane to New York. Grumpy union barons wondered aloud if he'd dropped in for a snack in case the Gate Gourmet dispute left his BA flight food-free. The surreal appearance of a tanned Cecil Parkinson in the seaside resort prompted another comrade to muse how little had changed in the past 20 years, with secondary action still banned.

The party chairman, Ian "Big Mac" McCartney, entertained delegates with a funny line about finding a prudent Gordon Brown scraping wallpaper in his South Queensferry home. "You decorating?" asked Big Mac. "No, moving house," replied the Chancellor. A fellow Scot, Big Mac got away with that one, but wisely dropped another quip after market-testing it the previous night on boozy hacks in the bar of the Grand Hotel: "What's the difference between Gordon and a coconut? You can get a drink out of a coconut."

Hilary Armstrong, Chief Whip and the government's Rosa Klebb enforcer,

is to address the 30-member Campaign Group next month after telling the chair, John McDonnell, that she doesn't want lefties running the party. The proposition appealed to McDonnell, though he agreed that she and the Chief Superintendent, Charles Clarke, anxious to sell his anti-terror laws, will be granted a hearing. Lefties are talking of not running a candidate in any leadership election, to avoid defeat, though Michael Meacher is selflessly prepared to stand. Big Gordie may avoid picking a deputy by asking John Prescott to hang around when Blair is history.

Guffaws over the Scottish First Minister Jack McConnell's attempt in a

new biography to jump from Blairite to Brownite at the turn of a page. Those who've thumbed the tome have been left queasy by an excess of detail, particularly the painful disclosure that McConnell was circumcised when he popped into hospital for a vasectomy. Buttoned-up Brown won't like that.

Sneaky Tim Allan, Alastair Campbell's Mini Me, might have been left looking for a deputy if he'd accepted Blair's invitation to rejoin Downing Street as communications head honcho. Spinner-in-chief David Hill, I hear, would have looked elsewhere if Tiny Tim had been imposed as his boss. The Humphrysgate affair suggests Tiny Tim thinks he's in the job anyway despite turning it down after Andrew Turnbull, the cabinet secretary, insisted he sell his PR outfit instead of placing it in a blind trust - a bad bit of business for a chap who'd be shown the door in a year or two by Big Gordie.

A proposed 50 per cent hike in the cost of Labour membership to £36 is justified by party bigwigs on the grounds that the National Trust charges £38 a year. Is Labour now officially a monument not a movement?

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