All the gossip from Inside Westminster

Polly snubs Miliboy

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 into No 10 he was calling the shots, sitting down as if he owned the place to dictate how his return was to be choreographed in the media. Mandy's no ordinary Business Secretary in the Government of Labour Unity.

Just when rubber-faced David Miliband may have prayed it couldn't get any worse, the Jim Carrey of Westminster has suffered a terrible indignity - being mocked by Michael Portillo. Yes, it's that bad. In Miliboy's backyard of South Shields, Polly entertained locals in the town's Customs House with put-downs of the waning star. "I am in an exclusive club called 'the former future prime ministers'," sneered Polly, "and I'm pleased David's joined us." Incidentally, I hear Miliboy's been advised by his much-reduced fanbase to upgrade his PR after slipping on that banana skin. Watch this space.

Maggie Thatcher's back in Downing Street alongside Mandy. An eagle-eyed visitor to the cabinet room spied both volumes of her mis-memoirs, The Path to Power and The Downing Street Years, on shelves to the right of the door through which ministers troop for Tuesday morning lectures. The tomes are secured behind toughened glass, a red alarm atop the bureau possibly primed to bring armed coppers running if the Supreme Leader goes further back to the future.

An interesting theory on the Hemsworth plumber Jon "Tricky" Trickett's surprise selection to carry the Supreme Leader's bags. The lefty class warrior recently peppered analysis of Labour's predicament with un-Talibrown references to "proletarianisation" and the "kulak class". What's largely forgotten is he was Mandy's PPS before the PoD's first cabinet defenestration. Perhaps Tricky's there to build bridges?

Pity Caroline "Heart of" Flint, demoted from regular to occasional cabinet visitor after being shunted from Housing to Europe. She'd packed her bags three days before the reshuffle and asked for a briefing on planes, trains and automobiles. Flint believed Transport was her destination. Catching the Eurostar weekly will be scant compensation.

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

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