Good and bad news for foundering George "Oik" Osborne. On the plus side, he retains a rich admirer. Unfortunately it's Richard Desmond. Word is that Dirty Des, a guest of Boy George's in the recent past at a Carlton Club fundraiser, retains great admiration for the Corfu cruiser. Indeed, the Westminster chatter is that Des, a one-time Labour donor who makes a mint out of blue TV and also publishes [...]

Gearing up for June's Euro elections is Harriet Harman. Labour's deputy leader is, I hear, fond of convening 30-strong campaign sessions in the party's HQ. I doubt Labour employs that many people, so someone must be pulling them in off Victoria Street. But Hattie Harperson should enjoy chairing meetings while she can. The word in No 10 is that Gordon Brown is toying with switching control over the forthcoming contest [...]

Gordon Brown has outed himself as a closet Burt Bacharach fan. Between wrestling with soaring joblessness and plunging shares, the Supreme Leader bumped into the Yankee composer in, erm, Downing Street. Bacharach was touring the bunker, crooned my snout, after parleying with a couple of Talibrown at the BBC Electric Proms. The Uncle Gordie encounter was unscheduled and to the immense surprise of No 10 flunkeys their man (interests: football [...]

Star turn of the tea room is the unlikely figure of Alistair "Now Everybody's" Darling. The country's bank manager has taken to boasting to the troops that he's halfway through implementing Labour's 1983 election manifesto. Hitherto known as "the longest suicide note in history", the nationalisation plan is suddenly regarded as a new Labour road map. Darling might cut the quips when he learns that the veteran lefty Ronnie Campbell [...]

The talk at Tory Towers is of a sofa war lost by Andy Coulson, editor of the Conservative Party. The former News of the Screws hack suffered what staff call "one of his Alastair Campbell moments" by behaving as if he was running the country. My snout muttered how toys left a pram when Coulson failed to persuade No 10 to sit Gordon Brown alongside David Cameron on GMTV's settee. [...]

Amusement not horror was the Talibrown's initial reaction when the Supreme Leader floated resurrecting the Prince of Darkness. Oh, how they laughed in the bunker, thinking Gordon Brown had developed gallows humour. Mandy's name was dropped by Big Gordy into Downing Street conversations, I discover, several days before the most unlikely reconciliation since Corrie's Ken and Deirdre got back together. Mandy restarted as he finished. As soon as he slithered [...]

To Camerontown in Brum, where Druggie Dave's champagne ban took the fizz out of the Tory shindig. Well, that and the collapse of capitalism as they knew it. Inside the security cordon, a confused tribe struggled to make sense of events.

I overheard a City grandee complaining that the names of the hedge-fund boys bankrolling the leader's office had been leaked. The shadow cabinet heavyweight Eric Pickles took your correspondent [...]

To Manchester and Brownsville where an inability to deliver a speech wasn't the only vote loser for that other prime minister, David "Hezza" Miliband. His timekeeping made Virgin Trains appear punctual. Hezzaband committed the cardinal sin of turning up 40 minutes late for a photo session with wannabe MPs, and MPs fidgeting impatiently to be snapped with the man they thought might, when they started queuing, be leader one day. [...]

The Supreme Leader is plunged into more gloom. Brown's attempt to reinvent himself as Green Gordon, the enviro-friendly premier, isn't going to plan. Low-energy light bulbs fitted to the chandeliers hanging in the Cabinet Room leave ministers in the dark, being noticeably dimmer than the old planet destroyers. The melancholy mood captures the atmosphere pervading Downing Street as plotters seek to oust the Supreme Leader. A minister suggested all would [...]

Tony Blair

As I was saying before I was so rudely interrupted we must be new, newer, newest Labour.

The government is Tony Blair, Tony Blair is the government.

Brave, courageous, bold, fresh, change, prominent, reform, daring, progressive, market, fearless, distinct, Blairite, me.

I believe in war, war on terror, war on poverty, war on things.

The scars on my bank balance confront the forces of capitalism and will tame [...]