Diary of a Notting Hill Nobody | 21 June 2008

Monday

Dave opened the nine o’clock by paying tribute to a great former shadow home secretary whose place in history, and on the back benches, was now assured. ‘We will give him all the space he needs to fulfil his brave quest of being re-elected to his own constituency.’

Then we proceeded to Options For Handling/Briefing Plans.

One — Personal crisis. Our thoughts are with his family at this difficult time etc.

Two — This is all part of a cunning plan to damage ourselves enough to Shore Up Gordon, and Stop Miliband.

Three — It is part of a plan for all Tory MPs to resign and put themselves up for re-election this summer in order to force a general election.

Four — We support him fully, and Dave is looking forward to helping him campaign.

Personally I think all are good — apart from Option Four which is contrived in the extreme, and has a whiff of desperation about it.

Tuesday

Thought it would be nice to take a welcome card and pot plant over to Dominic Grieve.

He was on his hands and knees with the carpet up — he’d found a trap door to a secret compartment! Dozens of copies of Guns & Ammo, mountaineering equipment, packs of dried food and bottled water, ice picks.

Dominic looked a bit scared. I tried to put his mind at rest. Told him everyone does the job differently. ‘You will bring to it your own unique style.’ He still looked crestfallen. So I told him Pret had named a sandwich after him — a French stick called ham and grieve! Think I may have overdone it by claiming all the girls were calling it ‘ham and Dominic’. But what else could I do? He looked so much happier.