Team Benn shares initials with a fatal disease. Worse still, it shares them with the PM
A copy slips into my hands of the glossy brochure for Druggie Dave's Black and White Ball, this month's toff fundraiser. Adverts for private banks and a posh school show Cameron's lot remain reassuringly elitist; auction prizes of a holiday on the Mexican estate of the wannabe MP Zac Goldsmith's family and a knees-up at Drones Club cutting a few more chips on your columnist's shoulders. I need another week to analyse the five-page seating plan, from Russell Abel to Sophie Ziegler via a Paul O'Grady, to ascertain who is up and who is down in the crazy, hazy world of the Tory leader.
Turkey on the Portcullis House menu was a bold statement during a bird-flu scare, yet our MPs declined to heed assurances from David Miliband, the jolly green giant, that the meat is bootiful. Those political carnivores "Boy" George Osborne and Jon "Crusher" Cruddas blanched, my source with the tray recounted, at the prospect of H5N1 with roast potatoes, and meekly requested the vegetarian option. Sticking with Boy George, an academic of great repute told a tale from high table that is, as we occasionally say in the trade, too good to check. Boy George, so the story goes, set off for Oxford to study PPE but the shadow bean-counter switched to history because he found the economics a bit hard. This might explain things.
Word of a tale of mistaken identity on Big Gordie's trip to the Vatican. Shriti Vadera, the Treasury adviser, was surprised to be bundled into a room of dignitaries awaiting an audience with the Panzer Pope. The bemused Privatisation Princess shuffled nervously before she was yanked out and replaced by Queen Rania of Jordan, the rightful guest. The British ambassador informed Big Gordie, by the way, that it would be bad form for a non-Catholic to kiss Benedict XVI's ring. The restraint was presumably no hardship for a married father-of-two.
How the mighty have fallen: spied in peasant class on a Cambridge-King's Cross rattler was that Blair discard, Lord Irvine of Pugin Wallpaper. Chauffeur-driven everywhere when he aspired to be a mighty Cardinal Wolsey figure, he obviously counts the pennies when spending his own money. Some things never change, however. It was after lunch and the bon viveur nodded off.
A cheesy turn in the bun fight for Prezza's Labour tiara with the formation of Team Benn. Cheerleaders in the rah-rah club promoting the saintly teetotaller as deputy leader routinely sign themselves off as members of TB, an American affectation imported into his campaign. The initials are those of a fatal disease, yet perhaps of greater threat to young Benn is the realisation that they are shared with the outgoing premier. The aid supremo is the political son of Tony, but is that Benn or Blair?
Pity poor Oofy, the Downing Street inmate outed last week by your correspondent as the brains behind the road-toll petition fiasco. Colleagues noted that bespectacled Ben Wegg-Prosser bears an uncanny resemblance to Miles Cooper, the similarly short-sighted school caretaker arrested by cops hunting a letter bomber. Oofy is unlikely to have his collar felt, however. As a weary Labour foot soldier noted, Oofy would have sent emails instead of letters.
Kevin Maguire is associate editor(politics) of the Daily Mirror
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