To tea for a natter with a cabinet minister. After he'd expressed disbelief at Willie Hague extending the austerity drive to twin bedrooms, the conversation turned, as it tends to these days with Conservative politicians, to the Labour soap opera. Miliband Street is gripping the Tory party as much, if not more, than it is the Labour Party. The minister assured me that the Cons fear the elder Milibrother, David, but are fascinated by the potential of his younger sibling, Ed. However, he insisted the Cameroonies believe the Milibrothers share Gordon Brown's two fatal flaws:
David Mili inherited a lack of emotional intelligence, Ed Mili the indecision. Ouch.
Harriet Harman, acting Labour leader, is, I hear, refusing to rubber-stamp a gaggle of peers proposed by Big Gordie. The decision, she says, must await the new leader. Who could be on such a list? Donors, apparently.
David Cameron's fag, Nick Clegg, enjoyed minding Downing Street while the head prefect was away. The Con and the Dem kept in touch by text, presumably because they're modern men and certainly not because they feared Andy "I Knew Nothing" Coulson might listen to voice messages. It is fortunate they text. A deep throat rang to report how workmen had cut off Clegg in his (deputy) prime, slicing through the home telephone cable in south London.
Index envy left hacks, including your correspondent, putting on a brave face after Tony Blair forgot us on that journey. Piers Morgan mentioned the Blair family 87 times in his own memoir yet the ex-PM seems not to have known Morgan, mentioning him zero times. But spare a thought for
the other Phil Collins, a Blairista veteran of No 10 scribbling these days on the Times. Collins is listed in the index: see p573. Turn to the page, and he fails to appear, a non-person.
Some years back I quizzed Cyril Smith about his links to the asbestos industry. To show he was a man of modest means, the Rochdale Liberal pointed to the bed in his terraced house sitting-room and declared: "My mother died in that bed and I still sleep in it." As denials of ill-gotten gains go, it was unusual.
Self-imposed modesty restricts me to a brief reminder that this column revealed in July that Peter Mandelson suspected his phone was tapped and that a New York Times Exocet was heading Coulson's way. I've since detected cracks in Tory support for the spin doctor. A prominent minister, who believes he was the victim of a hostile briefing, beamed when contemplating Coulson's predicament.
Much of the nation cooed when the Camerons paraded Baby Flo on the steps of No 10. One exception was a Tory researcher. He thought it insensitive for Dave and Sam to show off their new child a few days after Hague had expressed baby heartache. This ConDem coalition isn't a happy one. Increasingly within the Cons and the Dems, not between the Cons and the Dems.
Kevin Maguire is associate editor (politics) of the Daily Mirror
