EXCLUSIVE!
(well, only because no one else is rash enough to bring it to you)

The Labour Party is now down here with us all in Brighton. I'll probably stopped for security reasons on the way to the fishmonger's on the seafront. (No, this isn't the exclusive). Welcome Labour Party delegates!

Through a journalistic contact I have learnt that Peter Mandleson has devised a cunning plan, possibly his last. Of course he is now Lord Mandleson and so not a member of the House of Commons.

At 2pm this afternoon - or possibly tomorrow or Tuesday - every Labour MP is being ordered onto to the beach and the corralled into swimming out to sea. It is thought that, after a heavy lunch, even the good swimmers will be unable to survive.

The corpses will then be preserved in aspic so they can stand again in the forthcoming General Election. Pointless sacrifice has always been attractive to a certain section of the British public. And the dead MPs might get the sympathy vote.

Monstrous, cruel, facetious, implausible.

But have you a better plan?