Westminster Diary

Welcome to our round-up of snippets from the corridors of power.

GORDON'S SUPERMARKET SWEEP

Asda received a prime ministerial visit

We always suspected Christmas at the Browns' would be a frugal affair. As the cabinet visited Leeds last week to prove it was in listening mode, the prime minister told a round-table session with the public that he had visited a branch of Asda that morning to begin his Christmas shopping and, he joked, to see how the 2.5 percentage point VAT reduction had been reflected in the prices. We do not know what Mr Brown actually bought at the supermarket (slogan "more for you for less"), but we can reveal that, after the cabinet had concluded its official meeting inside the Royal Armouries museum, a close aide to the PM suggested he might want to get some presents for his children, John and Fraser, in the museum's gift shop. It's clearly going to be a credit crunch Christmas in the Brown household, as the PM walked determinedly past said gift shop without going in.

SLEAZE AND GOSSIP? YES, SIR ALAN

Will the veteran Lib Dem dish the dirt?

Congratulations to newly knighted Lib Dem Veteran Sir Alan Beith. Surrallan's publishing his memoirs, A View for the North. It's not quite Westminster's new must-read, because few expect much gratuitous sex and violence as he recounts his 35 years of blameless toil in the parliamentary vineyards, as MP for Berwick. We haven't delved in yet but, remember, he won his seat in a by-election caused by a Tory minister's affair with a call-girl, and he was prominent in the 1970s Liberal Party (did they have enough MPs for any not to be prominent?) at the time of the Norman Scott affair, when his ex-leader, Jeremy Thorpe, went on trial for conspiracy to murder a male model. (He was acquitted). So maybe there'll be a touch of Tarrantino after all.

PERTURBED BY PESTO'S PATTER

He is reportedly more trusted on economic matters than Gordon Brown or David Cameron - but the BBC's business editor Robert Peston's credit crunch analysis is a real turn-off for David Blunkett. The former home secretary revealed that he switches off his TV whenever Peston is on. In a lecture on democracy and equality, he said the economic crisis had "got people's ear" but politicians had to do more to communicate "difficult issues through a fog of words which mean very little... The whole business of derivatives is made so clear by Robert Peston that I have to switch off whenever he comes on".

STRICTLY NOT BOTHERED

Mr Sergeant's plight devastated three MPs

Amid all the talk about financial meltdown, are our elected representatives failing to see what really concerns people? A campaign to have the leaden-footed former political hack John Sergeant returned to BBC One's Strictly Come Dancing appears to have fallen on deaf ears. A Commons motion from Conservative MP Tim Loughton, proclaiming that he was "devastated" at Sergeant's departure, was signed by just two of his colleagues. And now Lib Dem Alistair Carmichael and Labour's Lynne Jones have added an amendment which replaces the word "devastated" with the words "mildly interested".

CHILL OUT

It is best known for creating hot air, but the Palace of Westminster is in fact a little slice of Siberia in SW1, it seems. Baroness Thomas of Winchester complained that temperatures on Monday mornings were not high enough. So government minister Baroness Andrews promised to crank up the vast heating system a little earlier to ensure those ultra-keen MPs and peers arriving at 8.30am on the first day of the working week are all snug and toastie. What's wrong with slapping on a bit of ermine instead?

FEELING THE CRUNCH

Last week, the diary reported how Tory MP Desmond Swayne was sporting a gash on his hooter after running into a fir tree. The trend for nasal nastiness continued when CBI director general Richard Lambert addressed a conference bearing a similar disfigurement. Conservative leader David Cameron, who spoke to delegates a few minutes after Gordon Brown, remarked that the prime minister, dealing with the world's economic turmoil, must have delivered a "Glasgow kiss" to ease his frustrations.

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