Some people take losing very badly. Ann Clwyd and her supporters were by no means gracious in defeat, when on Tuesday evening Ms Clwyd was deposed as the chair of the Parliamentary Labour Party. After hearing the result of the ballot, in one of the House of Commons committee room, MPs were almost immediately summoned to vote. When Ms Clwyd and one of her supporters former minister Janet Anderson, saw a gaggle of Brownite MPs and some of the parliamentary private secretaries who resigned in September after writing to Tony Blair to say he should resign, chatting outside the division lobby, paranoia kicked in. Ms Anderson, believing she had uncovered the sinister plot to unseat Ms Clywd, hissed: "Well that says it all doesn't it". In reality Ms Clwyd who only had a 11 vote majority when elected last year, had alienated a number of MPs since then and brought defeat on herself.
Theresa Villiers, the Conservative Shadow Chief Secretary, is not known to be shy and retiring, yet it appears she turned a bright shade of puce when told she would be appearing alongside her colleagues Tim Yeo and Derek Conway on GMTV’s Sunday programme. "Oh God, Derek Conway is so terrifying!"she exclaimed. Conway will no doubt be pleased that his reign of shock and awe has spread beyond Notting Hill.
I am delighted to see that at least some traditions don’t change in the good old Tory Party. I think it was Lord Curzon who was introduced to the delights of public transport in the 1920s for the first time. He was persuaded to take the bus home by his secretary but never having been on one before he rather assumed that a bus was like a taxi. So as he paid his fare he said to the driver of the Number 24, “now, take me to 23 Eaton Square, there’s a good chap.” Following in this fine tradition the resplendent Eurosceptic MP Bill Cash also got on a Number 24 this week and proceeded to ask the driver to wait a couple of minutes for some friends who were having difficulty with the ticket machine outside the Garrick Theatre. My witness to the ensuing events tells me that Mr Cash became more than a little exasperated when the driver of the bus explained that he most certainly could not do as requested and closed the doors. Cash stood in the way but the doors were too strong for him. “I demand you stop this bus now,” spluttered the hapless parliamentarian, but to no avail. Eventually he was let off outside St Martin in the Fields. Whether he was ever reunited with his friends we shall never know.
It must be the ultimate national humiliation for the French to have to launch a 24 hour news channel in English. But that’s what France 24 did this week. So desperate were they to spread the glorious news that they invited a whole host of new media luminaries, including blogger Guido Fawkes, to attend their launch last weekend on Paris, all expenses paid. And for those that couldn’t go a nice bottle of Moet & Chandon was delivered by Federal Express this week? Do they really think the British media is bought that cheaply? Hic.
Gordon Brown's staff were understandably confused with the large number of re-announcements in this year's Pre-Budget Report. It was so similar to last year's speech that the bumbling Treasury bureaucrats forgot it was actually a new announcement and dated it 6 December 2005 - 12 months old.
One of the surprise bestsellers of the autumn has been Lord Ashcroft’s history of the Victoria Cross – it’s sold a massive 36,000 copies so far and undergone seven reprints – far outperforming the publisher’s expectations. The accompanying TV series screened by Channel 5 also got treble their normal audience for a Sunday night slot and there is talk of a BAFTA nomination. Having also bought into Watford Football Club two months before their promotion to the Premiership one could be forgiven that anything His Lordship touches at the moment turns to gold. Hard up Tories at Conservative Central Office could be forgiven if they were hankering after him returning to his former post as Party Treasurer.
Having made an inaugural video podcast with David Davis – not so much Webcameron as Basherweb – the new political website eParliament.tv has secured an exclusive interview with the grand old man of Labour politics Tony Benn. During the interview Benn admits to being secretly rather pleased to get a death threat recently. "It shows I'm not harmless," says the anti-politician’s politician.
The health fascists are on the march again. It is seriously being suggested within Whitehall that the government should use information gleaned from Tesco Club Cards to target people they believe are eating the wrong things, judging by the contents of their shopping baskets. Tesco, it seems, know nothing of it and won’t be playing ball. Good for them.
David Blunkett continues to be a very naughty boy. He was overhead at the US Embassy Christmas Party last week opining: “If he wants to win, Gordon has got to get rid of the people around him. People like Douglas Alexander and Alistair Darling otherwise we will be dead in the water”. After his experience of tittle-tattling with his biographer Stephen Pollard about his Cabinet colleagues you’d have thought Blunkett might be a little bit more careful who he slags off. Apparently not.
Next week former Grandstand presenter and Father of the Universe David Icke (Britain’s very own Governor Moonbeam) might be pushed into bankruptcy by an American court. I can just feel those waves of sympathy for the world’s greatest conspiracy theories crashing through the ether. He’s launched an appeal on his website to pay legal bills but it extremely reticent about saying what the court case is about. He threatens darkly: “Next week will decide the outcome and we need some serious financial support for the legal costs this will incur. If we don't get that support, the work of David Icke is basically over.” See, there is a God, after all.
Each year about a couple of thousand sixth form politics students descend on Methodist Central Hall in Westminster to hear a range of well-known politicians speak. Anyone who has addressed one of these gatherings knows that a frightening occasion it can be. The lovely George dropped out at very short notice, leaving someone much lower down the RESPECT food chain to face the sixth formers. They were not impressed – and gave his understudy a right roasting. My favourite question was: ‘Your party is called Respect. Why didn’t George Galloway have the respect to turn up to talk to us?’ Hell hath no fury like a sixth former scorned…
I’m told by contacts on Newsnight that they are perplexed that Tory leader David Cameron hasn’t been on their programme since he skewered Jeremy Paxman during the Tory leadership contest. Weekly invitations are issued to Tory Central Office but answer comes there none. I’m not sure I blame Cameron. If you’ve stuffed Paxo once, why on earth would you go back to try it again? I think it’s called ‘quitting while you’re ahead’. Quite sensible for a politician, if you ask me.