A wry look at life in Westminster

Much fevered talk of a third Tory chap "coming out" under the socially enlightened regime of Red Dave. Our confirmed bachelor is rarely seen in Westminster without a posse of male admirers, and his sexuality is an open secret in the Westminster village. The fortysomething has, insists my gay snout, already confided that he feels emboldened by how Alan Duncan and Greg Barker were greeted with shrugs of indifference. Holding him back is a voting record that will invite charges of hypocrisy, our closet Tory repeatedly opposing equality in public. Watch this space.

At trade and industry, the safe pair of eyebrows that is Alistair "Mr No" Darling cleaves to his reputation as a politician capable of making even cautious cabinet colleagues appear revolutionary socialists. The latest initiative to stall in Mr No's dead hand is a wheeze by the government's Mr Green, David "Brains" Miliband, to force public buildings to install recycling bins. If collecting fizzy drinks cans is too leftfield, what chance taxes to save the planet?

The Robominister John Reid's macho culture is infecting the Home Office, if a travel guide is any gauge. My radar-lugged informant passed Simon Wren, the Reid spinner, as he extolled the charms of Latvia to a press pack off to the Nato killathon. "You're going to Riga? Fantastic place," he enthused. "Great strip joints."

Returning to Westminster after five months of recuperation from a quadruple heart bypass is the slimmed-down Scouser Peter Kilfoyle. But time away has failed to soften Slim Scouse. Buddies fear he'll be angrier than ever after stubbing out smoking and drinking less. He's written a novel and a book on Iraq, whose title gives a clue to his state of mind: Lies, Damned Lies and Iraq. No wonder he didn't receive a get-well card from the whips.

The 2005 crop of MPs turn out to be an ambitious lot after a Hansard Society study found seven in ten hope to be ministers, leaving them putty in the hands of patronage. They give the chamber a wide berth: the share of the parliamentary day they spend on the green benches dropped from 24 per cent to 14 per cent in a year.

Grizzly Frank Cook is stamping his foot over several trips to his Stockton North backyard by that little ball of energy, Barbara Roche. Defeated in Hornsey at the last election, the former minister is on the prowl for a new seat and - rightly or wrongly - he suspects she's the latest southerner to cast a beady eye on this Labour corner of north-east England. I do hope the pair bump into each other on Stockton High Street.

Pollyista Tories have a predictable new name for Churchill's, one of Westminster's finer eateries. The "Blue Labour" brigade now speak of convening for lunch in the Toynbee Room.

A plague of mice on the Burma Road, where lobby journos are based, is blamed on dirty rats. A sniffy letter from the authorities complains that we hacks leave so much food on desks that picky rodents turn their noses up at the poison. Given the quality of the grub served by a supposedly improved canteen, hacks are tempted to try the bait themselves.

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