The Twitcher tells Oona it was only business

The wine was chilled and the Pringles ready to be placed in little white bowls, until Hattie- No-Mates-Harperson studied the guest list and realised she wasn't about to put the party back into Labour. The deputy multitasker and deputy Labour chair was forced to cancel at short notice a Monday-evening bash for the 32 members of the National Executive Committee after, according to an email that popped up in your correspondent's inbox, she received "lots of apologies and only one member of the NEC who had indicated that they could attend". Presumably the politico with the empty diary was the Labour treasurer and Hattie's hubby, Jack Dromey - unless he, too, couldn't face it. Better luck to Hostess Hattie for when she recools the wine on 21 July, this time in Uncle Gordie's room at the Commons, though the proverbial telephone box would guarantee a crowd.

Frantic government whips were reduced to begging MPs to turn up in the Commons chamber to nod through a statutory instrument guaranteeing the continuation of ministerial salaries.

Such is the anger on the government back benches over the sanctimony, as it was put to me, of a No 10 diktat to vote on 3 July against their own review-recommended £2,000 increase, that in an unofficial industrial action, MPs staged a great stayaway. I also heard a whisper that after the Supreme Leader instructed a "unanimous" cabinet to swallow a freeze, one brave member asked for the issue to be reopened. We'll learn who he or she was in the reshuffle.

Smoking is banned in the Mock-Gothic Fun Palace, but the ashtrays have been saved for the nation after a revolt by the formidable North Durham fumer Kevan Jones. House suits saw the end of fags as an opportunity to restore the place to its Barry-Pugin glory, agreeing to unscrew brass receptacles introduced by the Office of Works in 1932 and those fitted by Giles Gilbert Scott after Hitler's bombs destroyed the chamber. But the victory of Jones, who is partial to cheroots, is eBay's loss, as a few of the old butt-catchers were almost certain to have surfaced on the auction site. Advertised, no doubt, as used by Churchill to stub out his Cuban cigars.

A snout mutters that the No 10 twitcher Joe Irvine (he once worked for the RSPB), and not Oona King, is to step into Fiona Gordon's heels as Big Gordie's chief political consigliere. Like Labour's new can-carrier, Ray Collins, Irvine is a former Unite official from its T&G wing. As is the union's joint general secretary, Tony Woodley, who's poised to chair the TULO (Trade Union and Labour Party Liaison Organisation) party-union get-together body. Unite for Brown!

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

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