Michael White picks through the papers on the morning after the chancellor's tax raid and finds himself declining an honour in unlikely circumstances. He also sees Gordon Brown take a battering from David Cameron. Tory morale is high.
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Breakfast, west London
The newspapers we get delivered at home are not as hostile to Alistair Darling's debut as I had expected. In some the word "Magpie" appears in headlines instead of the harsher "Burglar", which I thought would be the comparison of choice.
There seems to be a general air of anti-climax and disappointment rather than stronger emotions, though the FT is moved to a splash headline which reveals "Business anger at tax crackdown." The chancellor is apparently "hammering" entrepreneurs, which I doubt. But like all trade unions the City knows how to whine.
On Radio 4's Today, the morning bulletin board for the political classes, Darling is himself hammered by John Humphrys. It is always a fine line between sounding calm and sounding underwhelming, depending on circumstances. This chancellor neither rises nor sinks to occasions.
He flounders when pressed by Humpo on what Niall Dickson, ex-BBC now head of the influential King's Fund health tank, has said about the statement's passage on reform of personal care for the elderly sick. Is it true that it was a hint that means testing may be abolished?
The chancellor falls back on "getting the balance right," on the "need for change" and affordability. He cannot ignore ability to pay, he says. But he sounds uncertain. As a Scot he knows that Labour's Lib-Dem coalition partners in Holyrood squeezed a concession on free personal care out of his own party - at growing cost to Scotland's UK-funded budget.
The trouble on both sides of the border is that all NHS care is free - of course - but that what is deemed social care is means tested. Bathing a bed-ridden old lady is which exactly? But who would benefit most from free care? The usual suspects: those with cash.
At Westminster last night a grizzled Labour veteran reminded me of an old saw I had forgotten: that budgets (this was a kind of budget) praised on the day often turn out badly - and vice-versa. Ministers may take comfort from the thought, though I doubt that too.
As I round a parliamentary corner, talking to Patrick Wintour on the phone en route to my tube journey home, a voice calls out in the dark. "Are you Sir Michael?" It is a nickname given to me long ago by friends and younger colleagues in the press gallery. At least, I think they are friends.
But surely, knighthoods are not announced in this way? Not by a man who is clearly an official driver of some kind, peeping his head round the corner of Speaker's Court? Clearly, they are sounding me out. To disappointment of millions, I decline the honour.
But no. It turns out he is looking for Sir Michael Lord MP, the deputy speaker, another bald old soul with white hair, whom I can see waiting at the nearby taxi rank. I point the driver the right way, then try to explain what has happened to Patrick who has heard the Sir Michael bit on his mobile.
Talking of the taxi rank, the Today programme has picked up an email sent to parliamentary staff from the serjeant at arms, General Sir Peter Grant Peterkin, the office usually being held by retired military. It reminds them they are meant to let MPs have priority in queues around what is known as "the parliamentary estate".'
One way or another, about 10,000 people have passes, ranging from hereditary peers to secretaries, researchers, cooks and the huge works staff who keep the lights on and the ancient roof from leaking. It is indeed a "Westminster village".
I know the serjeant slightly; he is a really decent man. I do not think he would have done this off his own bat, but may have been put up to it by some obscure committee of backbenchers who had not thought it through properly.
The Speaker, Michael Martin, can be over-prickly about his dignity (he is routinely attacked by snobbish commentators for being a Glaswegian), but I cannot imagine him being silly enough to do this either. Perhaps there has been a row we don't know about?
In practice, most MPs nowadays wouldn't dream of queue-jumping, for the taxi (where they have long had first call) or the cafeterias. My own practice is always to hold doors open for members, not because they're better than me - though many are - but because they are elected by their constituents, even those who consort with Cheeky Girls.
"You go first, you got elected, I didn't," is my line. They are the People's Elect, something Radio 4's Humpo seems to forget: he beats up elected politicians but can sometimes fawn to the merely powerful.
Today he has Lembit Opik, the nice-but-daft Lib Dem MP, on air to denounce the serjeant's email as the "re-introduction of serfdom".
Lembit admits "there has always been a certain kind of inequality and people live with it" at Westminster. Of course there has, ninny, that's the point: MPs have been elected, they are legislators and parliamentarians who hold the executive to account, albeit not always very well.
The rest of us are of lesser account, even the more self-important elements of the media and parliamentary officialdom. It was, incidentally, a BBC reporter years ago who refused to stop hogging a phone for an MP ("I'm from the BBC") who helped get the hacks thrown off the terrace. Served us right. But I shall not be holding any doors open for Mr Opik for a while.
Westminster, 1pm
"Yes, but how bad was it?" Labour MPs asked after Gordon Brown's duffing at prime minister's question time. David Cameron, whom the bookies were writing off barely a week ago, was all over him - "the first PM in history to flunk an election because he was going to win it," he quipped. It was one of several wounding taunts about a lack of courage and purpose.
The honest answer is that it was pretty bad. Cameron's sound bites were well-organised but the Tory leader is also better able to think on his feet. Apart from one joke about there being only 26 names on the No 10 petition calling for an election (it will be thousands by bedtime), he was reduced to reciting litanies. Brown should be able to do better.
One little-noticed constitutional development surfaced at PMQs today. Ian Paisley asked a question with his hand out. Nothing odd there; he is assiduous and usually polite. But he is now also first minister of devolved Northern Ireland. Alex Salmond, his new counterpart at Holyrood, was also trying to get in, to add to Mr Brown's discomfort.
As we drift away I have to remind Plaid Cymru's Commons leader, Elfyn Llwyd, ("Brown can't think on his feet like Blair") that his party is now in coalition with Labour in Cardiff, so he should be kinder. Elfyn bet me a fiver there would be an election. I have graciously offered to settle for a beer.
Since hearing this morning about the serjeant at arms's email to staff I have traced it to a Commons notice board where it is co-signed by the formidable Sue Harrison, who runs the catering department. Staff and others must give MPs "prior access to services throughout the parliamentary estate" as from yesterday.
That translates as "retail and catering services, the post office, travel office and other facilities such as lifts, photocopiers, telephone cubicles, etc." Apparently, Mr Speaker agreed in July to a recommendation from the in-house administrative committee, chairman, Labour's Frank Doran, according to my reference book.
Most MPs I spoke to today knew nothing of it. "Nonsense," said a Labour ex-cabinet minister. "Pompous nonsense," said a Lib Dem, David Heath.
"Priority only matters when there's a vote on and some chap is trying to load a consignment of toilet rolls on to a lift." As I leave I open a door for Labour's John Battle, who is hobbling on a crutch. He fell off a ladder.
6 p.m. Westminster: The newspapers are sharpening their knives for Gordon Brown, only days after they - and the bookies - were writing off David Cameron, though the Mail was kinder than expected to Brown-Darling this morning. But it's a slow day and the showdown at PMQs is still leading the Radio 4 News, unusual for today's frenetic cycle. Media collective memory is short. Some Labour MPs' memories are long: they are less than heart-broken because they remember all the horrid things GB did to Tony Blair over the years.
Further researches on the Sergeant at Arms's ''MPs priority'' memo suggests that Andrew Robathan, Tory MP for Blaby, may have been the prime mover on the administration committee, supported, so it is said, by Chelmsford's Simon Burns.
Never mind, Speaker Martin usually gets the blame in the newspapers, whether he deserves it or not. Not on this occasion, they say. Mind you, older politicians add ''You've got to watch the officials. If you take your eye off the ball they try and close things down.'' Later a Labour MP reminds me that the press gallery is being refurbished this summer at public expense. True, though I remind him that health and safety modernisation is the driving force behind the upgrade which is almost complete.
Catherine Macleod of the (Glasgow) Herald reports that she has been showing a party of school children round Westminister. They come from Skye, as she does from nearby Mallig where the ferry comes in. On the train a woman overhears the kids worrying about being able to manage the London Underground. It will be all right she says.'' I come from a village with only one traffic light.'' One of the girls replies:'' I come from an island with no traffic lights.'' Catherine says they managed well.
