avid Cameron’s black mood over the dissing of his fellow Old Etonian Sir George Young by Grange Hill’s John Bercow is unlikely to be lifted by the identity of the Speaker’s first two visitors. Ignoring the protests of flunkeys, Comprehensive Boy Bercow’s Labour enforcer Martin Salter and the Campaign Group lefty Diane Abbott barged uninvited into the palatial apartment by the Thames to congratulate Comrade Conservative. Matchbox-sized Bercow looked unnerved, [...]

The Monday Clubber-turned-moderate John Bercow’s ambition is boundless, so up he popped in Strangers’ Bar, canvassing Labour votes for the Speakership. Lord Lucan riding Shergar would have created less fuss than the sight of this Tory MP in a watering hole otherwise known as the Kremlin. Regulars mumbled that they’d rather be visited by Bercow’s statuesque wife, the Labour-supporting Sally Illman, but once order was restored a comrade bought Bercow [...]

The BBC presenter Andrew Marr has achieved for Peter Mandelson what always eluded Tony Blair. The schoolmarmish Morecambe MP Geraldine Smith was so impressed by the way the Prince of Darkness turned the tables on Marr and grilled him on his own Sunday show over the fate of Gordon Brown that she announced to Labour MPs: “Something happened to me that has never happened before and I never thought would [...]

Bob Geldof didn’t like Mondays, but one of David Cameron’s posh boys has an aversion to Sundays. The surname of that one-time Charterhouse head boy, Jeremy Hunt, is deliberately mispronounced, I hear, in his Surrey backyard. The culture vulture’s brief includes sport, but he’s been shown a red card after a ruck with the rugby boys. Hunt, it transpires, is a six-days-a-week politician who doesn’t do Sundays. Invited to join [...]

I half expect David Cameron to promise that a Tory government would be “whiter than white” as he reverts to the Tony Blair opposition script and pledges to clean up politics.

We all remember what happened after that. I hear Druggie Dave also tries to dress like his role model these days. Our Tory toff was seen squeezed into jeans as tight as the ball-mugging pair that threatened to [...]

The fate of the country’s most famous former sheet metalworker, Michael Martin, was sealed when a Labour salvage squad failed to persuade MPs to rally behind him. Dishonourable members were too busy arguing about who might succeed Metal Mickey to listen to the whips. The Labour name mentioned most frequently is the saintly Kelvin Hopkins, MP for Frugal Central, but even tribalists concede it’s another party’s turn. A Lib [...]

Trying and failing not to gloat over the expenses bloodletting is a chuckling Neil Hamilton. The Tory lost his Tatton seat to that white knight, Martin Bell, the sleaze-buster who found “compelling” evidence that Hamilton received between £18,000 and £25,000 in the cash-for-questions scandal. Fast-forward 12 years, and the richest man in the cabinet, Shaun Woodward, has banked £100,000 of public dosh and the Tory rich kid Greg Barker [...]

That serial resigner Stephen Pound’s punishment for quitting as a ministerial bag-carrier for a third time – his flounce over the Gurkhas making it a hat-trick of departures, after downing red boxes over Trident and foundation hospitals – was to find his replacement. The Lurch-like figure of the Treasury minister Stephen Timms decreed Pound must come up with a sane backbencher who is loyal to the government and rarely [...]

Spied queuing in the Portobello Road outside Notting Hell’s Electric Cinema to see Armando Iannucci’s spinflick In the Loop was Peter Mandelson. Curiously, he was with his one-time little helper Benjamin Wegg-Prosser, last heard of earning roubles as an internet type in Moscow. Curiouser still, they were engaged in deep conversation with the lefty poster boy Jon Cruddas. My nosy snout observed that Cruddas didn’t sit with Mandy and Benji, [...]

On to Phil and Fearn’s This Morning sofa on ITV1 to discuss smears alongside Neil and Christine Hamilton. The Hamiltons were invited as former victims, after a bizarre, false rape allegation in 2001, but Mohamed Al Fayed and the cash-for-questions scandal continues to dog the couple. Christine Hamilton, the self-styled Mrs British Battleaxe, was sipping a cup of char before the show when she noticed a Harrods label dangling on [...]