The election will be on 6 May, but your correspondent has discovered that the Prime Minister briefly considered other spring dates. Gordon Brown instructed Ray Collins, Labour’s general secretary, to send contingency proposals for a contest in March or April to Downing Street. But Broon decided to stick with May when Collins replied that the cash-strapped party had no plan B, let alone a plan C or D. So 6 May it is, by default as well as calculation.
Philip Hammond MP, “Boy George” Osborne’s ambitious deputy, must be worth a few bob. A cameraman halted an interview outside Sky’s landlocked Osterley HQ after the guest — me, since you ask — was drowned out by what sounded like a motorboat. The vessel turned out to be Hammond’s enormous Jaguar, a gas-guzzling beast that looked big enough to fit “Two Jags” Prescott in the boot. The Tory era of “Vote blue, go green” is over. Nor is the “Age of Austerity” likely to worry a property developer who moonlights as the shadow bean-counter and would scythe public services.
Campaigning in Doc Martens rather than behind the wheel, meanwhile, will be Hilary Benn. The cabinet minister, a member of the nearest thing Westminster has to a dynasty, has bought only that brand of shoes, originally designed for factory workers, for two decades. His father, Tony, was painted in Doc Martens for a portrait that now hangs in the House of Commons. Persuading him to buy them, sniffs Benn Jr, is the sole political influence he has had on his illustrious forebear.
No sign of Tory wobbles as Michael Gove and Boris Johnson enjoyed what a snout described as a “very jolly” lunch at a pizza joint near City Hall. Is Gove hedging his bets by selling Cameroons and buying BoJos?
You meet the most unlikely sorts in the Strangers’ Bar. Howard Crosby, nephew of Bing, popped in for a swifty recently. Burly Brian Binley, Northampton’s Tory bruiser, took the amateur crooner-cum-businessman to dinner. Crosby Jr sang for his supper, warbling a few of his uncle’s hits, including “White Christmas” and “Pennies from Heaven”. Binley likes the sound of his own voice but was persuaded to listen rather than join in, a fellow Tory comparing his vocal style to a backfiring motorbike.
Some MPs find it hard to step aside when retiring. Which may explain why James Purnell is telephone-lobbying Labour members to back his favoured Stalybridge and Hyde candidate. Calling, that is, from India.
Andy “I Knew Nothing” Coulson gets in a tizz most evenings after ringing the Sun (presumably on an unbugged phone) for a sneak preview of the Wapping rag’s YouGov daily poll. A Tory mole whispered that the spinner dreads informing Cameron and Osborne of dips and leads that are still stuck in single figures. The Bullingdon Boys have started, I hear, to take it out on the messenger.
Kevin Maguire is associate editor (politics) of the Daily Mirror
This article appears in this week’s special double issue of the New Statesman.
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