The ex-shadow home secretary turned Parliamentary hopeful has hard words for “Helping” Hands
Word reaches my ear of tummy troubles on the Finance Bill where the frightful humiliation of his family's publicly funded housing wheeze failed to put Sir Nicholas Winterton off his food. My snout witnessed frustration gnawing away at the Macclesfield Martyr as Tory colleagues, particularly the millionaire show ponies Philip Hammond and Brooks Newmark, ate into supper time by confusing the frequency and longevity of their interventions for perspicacity. Never the most patient of men at the best of times, Sir Nick, as committee chairman, erupted in a harrumph when his formidable MP wife, Ann, popped her head around the door and was seen to mouth: "There's no hot food left." When the unhappy band of brothers finally agreed a 45-minute break, Sir Nick complaining of insufficient time for "a more leisurely meal", he grumbled that only "bacon sandwiches, affectionately known as bacon butties" remained in the tearoom. The inconsolable Sir Nick, muttered my snout, looked a few slices short of the whole loaf.
Once again, the former disrespect tsar Louise "Hard" Casey has opened her mouth and put a Doc Marten in it. True, the self-wrecking ball didn't threaten to deck anybody or go on a bender, but she triggered a collective intake of breath among even Blairites at a talkathon on the US elections in Church House, Westminster. Hard-Casey's pointed inquiry, "Have you got any advice for Gordon Brown?" was sidestepped by the Democratic former ambassador to Morocco Marc Ginsberg and the Republican one-time White House propagandist Scott McClellan. Not so Uncle Gordie's pulverised, if undefeated, praetorian guard, which is vowing revenge over what it viewed as public ungratefulness after the Supreme Leader gave her a gong and a nice little earner proposing community punishments. A frothing Brownite muttered that Hard-Casey should be required to wear an orange vest and pictured on wanted posters pasted outside every Whitehall department.
The unlikely snippets you pick up in a by-election!
Unlikely snippet 1: The ringmaster of the Haltemprice and Howden circus, David Davis, once told Hammersmith and Fulham's Greg "Helping" Hands to his face that he was boring him and should immediately desist.
Unlikely snippet 2: The Tory hero of Henley, John Howell, is a keen organist but in Warborough, where he bangs a church keyboard, he is known as "the commander", because the newly elected MP plays too fast and ignores hints to slow down.
The big political question of the week: Where's Druggie Dave's Bullingdon Club tailcoat? Your correspondent promises he will endeavour to find out the answer.
Kevin Maguire is associate editor (politics) of the Daily Mirror
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