All the gossip from the Westminster Village

Hissy fits and a comb-over

The Prince of Darkness has, I gather, fallen out with Downing Street. All good resurrections come to an end, and perhaps the only surprise is that it took six weeks for his first hissy fit. Baron Mandelson is upset that No 10 pronounced Blairism dead, buried by the serial borrower Alistair "Nobody's" Darling taxing the kind of nice people who buy yachts and own villas on Corfu. Mandy decreed the message was Blair Lives and New Labour Rules, OK - if, admittedly, under a red flag.

Odds have shortened on Druggie Dave going bald before the election if the recession delays the poll until 2010. Cameron's Bobby Charlton comb-over appears ever more elaborate from my bird's-eye view in the gallery, a fine tribute to the hairdressing trade. The Silvikrin Kid's turning into slaphead Alec Douglas-Home, who, coincidentally, was the last Old Etonian to lead the Tories.

The most popular MPs in the Palace of Westminster are Labour's Alan Meale plus the Tonys Cunningham and Wright. The trio own a horse, Theatre Bell, which lost 15 straight races and seemed fit only for cat food when stabled in Thirsk, until a switch to Blair's old backyard of Sedgefield worked wonders. The gee-gee has won four of its past six races to supplement many a parliamentary salary: the crush in Strangers' when it romps home is testimony to sums riding on the nag, everyone from ministers to messengers scrambling for a piece of the action. One punter in the Mock Gothic Fun Palace scooped a grand on a £50 punt. Darling should put £12.5bn on Theatre Bell instead of cutting VAT. The horse sounds a better bet.

Word floats over the Atlantic at rowing-boat speed of the miniature schnauzer fan Mark Pritchard going barking mad on a Westminster delegation to Washington. Asked who would win the presidential race, five colleagues politely declined to answer. Not the motormouth Tory MP. Pritchard raised US embassy eyebrows by giving ten good reasons why it was certain to be, erm, McCain-Palin.

It's official: cabinet ministers are a bunch of suckers. Werther's Originals and Fox's Glacier Mints are poured into glass bowls to soothe the politburo during the Supreme Leader's harangues. My snout with the sweet tooth slurped that there's a rush for the German butterscotch, the Leicester mints proving less popular. It's surely only a matter of time before Druggie Dave's excitable attack dog Chris "the Jackal" Grayling is unleashed to accuse ministers of unpatriotic crunching and inflating the trade deficit.

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

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