The mystery of who will head Labour’s election campaign has been solved by Gordon Brown’s conduct in private sessions. A snout muttered that Broon bestowed control on the assassin-turned-praetorian Lord Mandelson by opening the inaugural gathering with: “Right, Peter, what’s our strategy?” Lord Mandy of Epithets has more titles than the darts champ Phil “The Power” Taylor, but I hear he fancies another bauble to announce his campaign status.
Dome-headed Eric Pickles is known to Cameroon Doctor Who fans as “the Sontaran”. Disloyal Tories wonder if their chairman and the stocky humanoids were separated at birth. A Sontaran’s weakness is a “probic vent” on the back of the neck; Pickles’s weakness is meat pies. Dave’s pet northerner is still the shadow cabinet’s undisputed heavyweight after his latest diet ended like all the rest — in failure.
Are the whips going soft? The Rasputin-like Nick “Newcastle” Brown recently allowed Labour bruisers to hold a charity cake sale in the party’s Lubyanka. Jokes were being made about the MP for Eccles and about the Tory John Butterfill, until in wandered the West Midlands whip John Spellar. Spellar, who sees the dark cloud in every silver lining, declared that the office was supposed to cook votes, not sell cakes.
Zac Goldsmith, Tory playboy, has hired the PR manager Ian Monk (whose clients include the Band of the Coldstream Guards) to salvage his election attempt. After his tax-dodging revelations, Goldenboy may need the marines to win the seat in Richmond Park.
David Miliband, the MP for South Shields, has lost the X factor. The Foreign Secretary refused to add his name to a motion hailing the local hero Joe McElderry’s singing success. Milibanana said constitutional convention dictates that very important ministers don’t sign Commons motions. But Westminster’s inner workings went over constituents’ heads. At a Tyneside hostelry, one disgruntled drinker accused the MP of a heinous Geordie crime: favouring Strictly over X Factor.
Best wishes for a speedy recovery to the carrot-crunching farming minister Jim Fitzpatrick, who has undergone a face operation. An unkind colleague opined that the veggie was lucky to have a spare, having been born with two.
Kevin Maguire is associate editor (politics) of the Daily Mirror
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