It's next door, No 11, that's the problem
From the office of the Rt Hon Alan B'stard MP
Sometimes I wonder why I bother to run this country. Yes, I know I make a fortune in backhanders (doesn't everyone in this line of business?); I know my power and charisma make me almost tediously irresistible to women; I know I can pick up the phone and change the fates of nations, but there are times when I really envy the illiterate peasant I employ to clean out the cesspit at B'Stard Towers, formerly known as Dorneywood. And this week was seven of those times.
I suppose it was my own fault for underestimating George Bush. Of course, I knew from first-hand experience that behind that dumb "Aw-shucks" exterior ticks the most perverse political brain since Pol Pot, but I really didn't expect him to call my bluff over a measly 50 per cent rent hike.
I explained that running a secret network of private torture centres is an expensive business: electricity prices have just gone up for the third time this year, the British Airports Authority has started surcharging all FlyB'stard rendition flights, and multilingual Serbian ex-secret policemen don't exactly grow on trees. Furthermore, the number of dangerous al-Qaeda operatives keeps increasing. Every time you abduct a bearded Muslim and subject him to a few days "enhanced interrogation", bingo, there's another terrorist confessing all.
was horrified when I learned that George was about to admit that these private prisons existed, and to declare he would bring the inmates to Guantanamo and give them an unfair trial. If he were to mention my personal involvement, it would make my 2005/06 tax return look very unconvincing. Luckily, I was able to dash to Washington in my personal Concorde and show George some very convincing photographs of his brother Jeb and farmyard animals.
By the time I got back to London, the simmering feud between Tony and Gordon had reached boiling point. The gentlemen's agreement reached all those years ago had finally broken down. I'm not talking about the much-hyped deal at the Granita restaurant in Islington, when Tony had the calf's liver and Gordon had the cover charge because that was the cheapest thing on the menu. I refer instead to the agreement reached in the build-up to the 1997 general election.
At that time Tony and Cherie had three young children and were trying seven times a night for a fourth. Gordon, on the other hand, was a dour bachelor and about as sexually active as the Pope's wife. Yet, ironically, the private accommodation above 11 Downing Street was far more spacious than the poky apartment over Number 10. So Premier and Chancellor agreed to exchange back-door keys and move their flat-pack furniture into each other's living quarters.
But look at the situation today. Tony and Cherie's eldest sons, Euan and Nicky, are now two fine independent young men, who seldom sleep at Downing Street since Tony and Cherie own flats in Bristol, a Georgian town house in Connaught Square, and a nice little place in Tony's constituency.
Gordon owns no property other than a small subsistence croft in Dunfermline and his grandfather's cufflinks. Yet he is now a married man with two small children, and all four Browns have to share a single attic bedroom. No wonder Gordon has been casting covetous glances at the commodious chambers over his head to which he has no access.
Thus the present constitutional crisis has not been caused by Gordon Brown's desire to get into Number 10, but by his desperation to get back into Number 11. But the Blairs turn out to be the neighbours from hell. Cherie refuses to budge while she's still paying Carole Caplin for feng shui-ing the bathroom, and Tony has only just installed one of those wall-mounted plasma televisions to watch his favourite rock DVDs, and he's determined to get his money's worth.
In a bid to keep the peace, I persuaded Tony to offer Gordon the vague promise to retire in the more or less foreseeable future, a promise I know Tony made with his fingers crossed behind his back. But on Tuesday night, when I was still in Washington teaching Condoleezza Rice some new five-finger exercises, the Browns' baby was being particularly restless and noisy. Tony responded to the screaming by provocatively slipping his latest DVD purchase into the player: Gordon Is A Moron by Jilted John. And then he pressed the repeat button.
That night, a wild-eyed Gordon Brown virtually melted the telephone lines, calling up his kamikaze junior ministers and ordering them to write their joint blackmail letter to the Prime Minister. As a consequence, we now face a year-long election campaign inside New Labour, during which the nonentities that pass for cabinet ministers will ceaselessly jockey for position.
But don't worry. Whoever wins, I'll still be in charge.