Is "Basher" Davis plotting to have Druggie Dave shot for crimes against Conservatism?

Hacks boarding Brown Force One, an ageing BA 767 commandeered to fly Big Gordie to Camp David, were surprised to be handed a Downing Street statement. The prose was billed as the premier's formal thoughts ahead of his encounter with George W, and duly appeared in the British media.

Curiously, the words turned out to be the bones of a Downing Street piece penned for the Washington Post. Curiouser still, in what is officially termed the post-spin era, was the 20-minute chat with the PM high over the Atlantic. No cameras, no tape recorders, no notebooks. To an incurable nostalgic, it was eerily reminiscent of the foreign forays of Blairways.

The conspicuous loyalty to troubled Druggie Dave of David "Basher" Davis, the broken-nosed SAS reservist who leads the Tory right's paramilitary wing, is disturbing the Notting Hellers. What is the inveterate plotter up to, wondered a timid shadow minister who confessed to being frightened of the shadow Home Office operator. Modernisers fear that unless Cameron recovers in the polls, Davis, a civil libertarian, would guarantee Druggie a fair trial - then find him guilty of crimes against Conservatism and have him shot.

That diehard Blairite Shona McIsaac ruffled feathers before the recess by repeatedly interrupting Big Gordie at a gathering of Labour shop stewards. Elected along with Helen Jones to the parliamentary committee after Joan Ruddock and Angela Eagle were presented with red boxes, the Cleethorpes chatterer evidently likes the sound of her own voice. Wags compare Shona McBlair to a Japanese soldier marooned on an island who doesn't realise the war is over. The whisper is a slate will be run to oust her in the autumn, McBlair successful only because the Londoners Karen Buck and Dawn Butler split the soft-left vote.

Spin isn't new Labour's only habit to die hard with Big Gordie and to be served up to fat cats at September's party jamboree. Lobbyists and assorted vested interests are being offered dinner tables for ten in Bournemouth's pavilion ballroom in return for £12,500. The price includes week-long security passes, presumably to buttonhole ministers about pressing issues near to the wallets of clients. Yet the brochure states that £5,000 is a donation, the remaining £7,500 deemed a "commercial transaction". Sounds suspiciously like a wheeze to deflate the value of registered gifts.

I recount, without prejudice, a snippet from the Screws of the World. Cheeky Girl Gabriela Irimia (left), stepping out with the Libido Democrat Lembit Öpik, has lopsided breasts with nipples in the wrong places after a boob job went wrong. To justify conveying such "news" to readers of this weekly, I undertake to convene a panel of experts to assess the impact on Ming the Merciless's prospects - if I remember when this column returns after its August break.

Kevin Maguire is associate editor (politics) of the Daily Mirror

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