The Tory Taliban flash the cash, Tessa holds court, and Gordon's accent goes south

First evidence of organised Tory resistance to Citizen Dave's coup is found on the floor of a Commons corridor. A £500 donation and epistle from a wealthy benefactor urges right-wing headbangers in the faith, flag and family Cornerstone Group to fight the forces of redefinition. Absent-minded secretary John Hayes dropped the cheque, and I helpfully reacquainted the MP with it. Sheepish Hayes denies Tombstone is a party within a party, though Dave may not see it that way when the Tory Taliban launch a website funded by another right-on sponsor.

Tessa Jowell, cabinet Olympian, proves a tad tricky on a dash to south-east London and Bexley Council, which Labour holds by a single seat. Her office declines an invitation to perform at a working men's club on the grounds that it doesn't possess large round tables, let alone the fruit-and-flower centre displays she so enjoys. Thus voters in working-class Northumberland Heath are invited to Bexleyheath and the Applegarth suite of the Marriott Hotel for an audience with Queen Tessa. Several Labour activists find she isn't worth the trouble.

Up early to loll on Andrew Marr's sofa as Big Gordie vows that as PM he will force terrorists to pay for identity cards before locking them up. The actor Ian Richardson, who played equally ambitious Francis Urquhart in House of Cards, whispers that Big Toughie is losing his Scottish accent.

Plummy Richardson triumphantly notes his fellow Scot sounds increasingly

English, sparking fears that this Britishness thing is going too far.

Lodge minutes of the Press Gallery funny-handshake brigade record the installation by ancient custom of companions in the chairs of Joshua and Zerubbabel at their 366th convocation. Our media masons go on to listen to lectures on the robes and sceptres, presumably a short history of the pinny. After two hours and four minutes of funny goings-on, they're off to dine at an Italian restaurant. I count 31 names and shall report further next week.

Jack "the Lad" Straw and ex-ambassador turned general-election rival Craig Murray are in a "who'll blink first" stand-off. The Foreign Secretary refuses to clear Murray's weighty 160,000-word memoirs for publication; our ex-man in Uzbekistan offers the book for sale from June on Amazon. Murray threatens to lift the lid on UK support for torture and rendition. Jack the Lad, it seems, is putting Murray through his own torture.

Edwina Currie was not alone in watching John Major regularly take down his trousers. His grumpiness as PM wasn't entirely owing to the "cabinet bastards", according to a former aide, but also to the need for regular painkilling injections in his backside. A car accident in Nigeria left him with a bad back and one leg shorter than the other.

Kevin Maguire is associate editor (politics) of the Daily Mirror

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