"Did you accept Ken Livingstone's friend request? Ha ha, no, me either" ... The new cabinet holds its first meeting. Photograph: Stephen Hird/AP
So, the unveiling of Gordon's dream team, a historic day. Because what we have is no less than the first Facebook cabinet. Forget the political pundits and the rumours of who would be in and who out - all you actually needed to do was to consult the social networking site.
Because, with almost no exceptions, everyone chosen for promotion has a profile on Facebook, and everyone who was demoted, doesn't. A coincidence? I think not. So there's Hazel Blears, with her 704 online friends, David Miliband, with 425, Alan Johnson narrowly trailing with 420, James Purnell with a slightly lacklustre 117 and Peter Hain and Hilary Benn with with a plainly ridiculous 892 and 890, respectively.
And Margaret Beckett? No profile, no friends. Patricia Hewitt, ditto. Now, it'd be nice to think that choosing cabinet members isn't some sort of beauty pageant-cum-popularity contest, but unfortunately this isn't very convincing. For it begs the question is David Miliband the best person for the job of foreign secretary, or was he simply this government's Miss Congeniality?
It's all so fake, of course. I sent Hilary Benn a polite message via Facebook for a piece I was writing for the Observer last week, and got one back, several days later, from "Alex" who looks after his site for him. Appearing to be digitally with it is key, evidently, to be part of Gordon's gang - appearing to be modern and accessible. But it's just a sham: they're all still hiding themselves away behind a firewall of flunkies and gophers.
Which brings me to my second point. In the article, I attempted to draw up a scheme of the new old boys' network by working out which media mogul is friends with which comedian who in turn knew which politician via the 'friends' lists on Facebook. By this method I connected Stephen Fry with Andrew Neil, Patrick Moore with Ross Kemp and Arianna Huffington with Victoria Aitken. And I'd hoped, really hoped, that my article, and the resulting graphic which looked like some sort of mutant family tree, might embarrass people into perhaps thinking that touting one's friends like prize trophies might not be the way forward.
But no. Ian Hislop wrote to tell me that he'd experienced a spike in requests of people wanting to be his friends; Linford Christie sent me a cheerful message saying that he's been inundated with "beautiful ladies", and although I can't claim to have a hand in it, I note that since Sunday, Lachlan Murdoch, Rupert's son and heir to the empire, has signed up. There's a rather fetching photo of him on board his yacht.
His sister Elisabeth has appeared too, although she doesn't even need to list her best friends - they're quite clearly visible in her profile picture: Rebekah Wade, editor of The Sun, and Claudia Winkleman. Rebekah now has her own entry, although is lagging in the friends stake so far with only five listed so far; however, one of them is Steve Furst, a Little Britain writer, who in two easy steps now links Lachlan Murdoch to David Walliams.
It's so frustrating this. The graphic we did for the Observer took hours and hours and hours (and almost led to the art director knifing me) and now it's already hopelessly out of date. I could be linking the new home secretary to a German count, the new chancellor to an up-and-coming It girl; I could be drawing arrows between our new culture secretary and the Freud-Murdoch power nexus.
Oh, all right, I admit it, my interest in Facebook started out as nosiness, turned into so-called "research" and has now become a pointless time-wasting obsession. So I'm asking again nicely. Please stop it now.
