Diary

Monday Bath plugs 25; scatter cushions 173; patio heaters 15; gazebos 3 (v bad). I’ve made an official complaint to Nigel. They’re going to have to get me some help. I cannot man the Expenses Hotline on my own any longer and neither should I be expected to. It’s worse since they started sending in photocopies of claims for me to cross check. If I have to go through another ten-foot-long B&Q receipt looking for bath plugs and toothbrush holders I will scream. And how am I supposed to know if a garden heater is a legitimate expense? I suppose you could argue that an MP cannot be expected to catch a chill during essential family barbecues if he is to fulfil his obligations to voters properly, but I sense I’m on a sticky wicket.

Monday Our new Expenses Helpline is completely jammed. We’re not even scratching the surface of the demand. Had an MP on this morning hysterical about his Sky subscription. Something about ‘buxom babes’ and ‘essential research into Broken Britain’. Another backbencher demanding to know what to do about his hunting fees — ‘Are they saying I can’t claim them back now? Ridiculous! It’s only £115 a month for a full subscription including field money.’ I said I thought it probably best if he didn’t, just until the fuss dies down. Then someone who wouldn’t give his name but, weirdly, sounded exactly like Wonky Tom.

Monday It’s all v odd. As far as I can tell, until this week we didn’t have any tax cuts at all and people were jolly cross about it. Now we seem to have dozens of tax cuts which we are going to have to drop and people are even crosser. What I want to know is, how did we get from having a policy of no tax cuts which definitely was going to happen, to having a policy of loads of tax cuts which possibly isn’t going to happen? And isn’t the result broadly the same in both cases? So what’s all the fuss about?? I just cannot get my head around it. The strangest thing of all is why Ken is suddenly answering his phone at weekends and agreeing to our requests to go on Sunday television programmes to talk about the economy.

Monday V exciting! Our new Apology and Regret Strategy is such a success we are going to expand it. Jed says we’ve really set the agenda with some groundbreaking grovelling which has made Gordon look like a horrid grump who can’t own up when he’s as guilty as a puppy sitting next to a pile of doo-doo. Or should that be do-do? By contrast Dave is a man of towering integrity who is not afraid to say when something he’s had nothing to do-do with has gone horribly wrong. Just as when he apologised manfully for the slave trade, Our Leader’s Apology For The Recession has blazed a trail in taking responsibility for the actions of others which have resulted in disasters we could never have foreseen or prevented.

Monday Dave’s horrible clothes are a triumph! Of course everyone is claiming it was their idea, but the fact is no one remembered he’d got those smelly old trainers made out of recycled tyre rubber and wine bottle corks until I pointed it out. Sam was a bit trickier. Once Tom and I got over to the house and started rooting through things it was obvious we weren’t going to find anything scruffy so we had to improvise by scuffing a pair of her best boots with a spaghetti spoon. She wasn’t best pleased at first — lot of choice mockney swearing about stoning crows — but when the photos came out even she could see the wisdom of it.

Monday Major recession panic. Clearly we are being out-apocalypsed by Labour. Dave furious and wants to know why we’re still only predicting the worst downturn in 80 years while Ed Balls is calling it the Most Terrifying Depression in the History of Mankind. Obviously, we need to do the doom vision thing better, or we could find ourselves in government a year from now amid allegations that we didn’t see the end of the world coming. It’s not as if we didn’t make a good start with Gids predicting the death of sterling, but since then we have basically been playing catch-up. Thankfully our new economic recovery committee is now in place and will consider how to articulate a vision of ruin more dramatic than Labour’s at its first meeting.

Monday Am bit confused about Responsible Capitalism. While wanting to Be The Change as always, the new RC guidelines are making the bagel run v complicated. Not sure the little place on the corner fully demonstrates a ‘sense of responsibility and a moral framework’. On the other hand, the only real alternative is the big-chain coffee shop down the road which is clearly engaged in ‘booster capitalism’. And neither of them would appear to have a ‘vision for the country that connects the economy, society and the environment’. Asked Wonky Tom for help but he shouted ‘For f**k’s sake just go and get the bagels!’ It’s all v well him taking this devil-may-care attitude.

Monday Tricky times. I’ve got two statements to work on and they’re virtually interchangeable. Am worried Dave will end up urging the FSA to investigate the despicable conduct of Labour peers while calling for City fat cats to be suspended from the House of Lords. Possibly there is some overlap so it wouldn’t be the end of the world. Nevertheless would rather get it right so am off to the Austerity Room for a bit of Fiscal Meditation before I start drafting... Oh dear. Ken was in there, smoking a big fat cigar, his feet up on the BrightHouse coffee table. He was in v jolly mood, pointing to the posters on the walls and laughing: ‘What’s all this nonsense about babies being born in debt? It’s absolutely ridiculous!

Sunday Strange call from Gary. Wanted to know if I knew anything about meatloaf. I said no, not my taste in music but that wasn’t what he was after. Said he’d rung every single girl in the press office and no one knew how to cook it, or what was in it, apart from meat. So I was to go and get Mummy. They were chatting for ages. She said: ‘Oh yes, it’s definitely the sort of thing one might cook for that occasion... beef ... yes, organic beef if you prefer... yes of course you can have my mobile number and ring me if you get any awkward questions... ’ She won’t say what’s going on and has, annoyingly, taken to calling herself ‘senior adviser to David Cameron’s director of communications’.

Sunday Totally shattered. Up at dawn doing Dave’s bookshelves for Marr with Wonky Tom. He brought a heap of boring stuff and wouldn’t let me put Katie Price’s Perfect Ponies out. Insisted on some weird sci-fi books that only he would read. After bit of negotiation I managed to get Black Beauty on the bottom shelf. But when I watched the tapes later you couldn’t see it. I know Dave doesn’t want to look too horsey but surely it would have been better than the phonebook? Tom claims not. Says addition of Thompson Local was genius and made it look like Dave nips out to pick up pizza. Whatever. Monday Baffling stuff. Even though we are ahead in the polls, voters claim they still trust Gordon to run the economy more than Dave.

Monday Mr Clarke on the phone again, v crabby. He says it’s taking a lot of hours out of his day having to answer questions about the economy and can’t we stop people calling him so he can get on with counting sparrows. ‘At this rate the only way I’ll get my RSPB garden-watch sheet filled in is by taking that blasted job Dave’s banging on about. At least then I won’t be allowed to say anything.’ Told Jed and he said this meant the strategy was working. Am under strict orders to tell everyone who rings for Gids that they’re to phone Mr Clarke. ‘We’ll smoke him back into the shadow cabinet if it kills us. He’s going to be begging to be let in soon.’ Genius!

Tamzin Lightwater's New Year’s Resolutions Here they are, my New Year’s Resolutions for 2009: 1. Keep job. Make self indispensable to Dave, thus ensuring that should the axe fall again on the Tory nerve centre as Britain plunges ever deeper into recession, Yours Truly will be last person Jed thinks of when he’s trying to make savings, and not just escape redundancies cos am the only one here who knows how to restart the cappuccino machine, which is running a limited service only, by the way — no chocolate sprinkles until further notice due to Compassionate Cutbacks. 2. Devise responsible yet headline grabbing fiscal stimulus.

Monday Tremendous excitement after the PBR. Dave called us into The Cauldron, our inner sanctum, for a top-secret briefing. Felt v privileged to be there, just me and 150 other core members of CCHQ. Dave was wonderful. He completely cleared up any nagging doubts we might have had as to why we are not opposing the rise in the top rate. It’s deeply strategic stuff, but suffice to say he and Mr Letwin, and Gids obviously, have worked out that standing up for the middle classes is precisely what Labour thinks we will do, and therefore precisely what we will NOT do — genius!

Monday Hooray! We are the party of spending cuts and proud of it — at last! It really was a stroke of genius by Dave to put Mr Letwin in charge of drawing them up because Mr Letwin is just about the cleverest economic brain we have, aside from Mr Redwood of course! He certainly won’t be going into hiding this time. Just as soon as he’s dusted off his £20 billion package from 2001 and tarted it up a bit we’ll be shouting it from the rooftops. And people say we haven’t changed! We’re constantly changing. If dumping our commitment to pretend to match Labour spending plans for a bit in favour of a swingeing package of cuts doesn’t show we’ve changed I don’t know what does! Tuesday Bumped into Gids.

Monday I can’t believe people are saying that tax cutting is Gordon’s idea! This is an unbelievable cheek!! Dave has been banging on about cutting taxes for three years now. Every time he makes a speech it’s tax cuts this, tax cuts that. Tax, tax, tax — it’s all we ever talk about. You know what I think has gone wrong? We’ve been calling for tax cuts for so long now people just don’t hear us any more. It’s like white noise. This is probably why a lot of our tax cutting talk just hasn’t been reported. People are bored of it. I mean, there’s only so long you can go on about the Virtuous Cycle before people switch off. Even Mr Redwood was begging us to stop going on about it. Nanu! Nanu!

Sunday Just had an absolute nightmare setting up one of those conference calls. Jed thought it would be nice if Dave rang Mrs Palin to wish her luck. Simple enough you might think. Oh no. First of all he had to explain who he was. Literally. As in ‘Hello this is David Cameron.’ ‘Who, honey?’ ‘David Cameron, the leader of the Conservative party.’ ‘The whaaaat?’ ‘The British Conservative party.’ Then there was all this shrieking and giggling: ‘Oh my gaaad! What show am I on now? Are you from the BB of C? Is this Ronald Brand? Is Jolyon Ross on the line? Oh my gaaaaaaad! I just love you crazy Brits! Benny Hill, right? Too much! We should go hunting foxhounds together!’ In the end we had to put the phone down.

Monday Yikes! Memo from Jed in California marked ‘Urgent and F***ing Desperate’. It’s v. bad news. It seems the brand is recontaminated. Lord A’s latest focus group asked people to name the first four words that came into their heads when shown a picture of Dave and Gids: yachts; hookers; Coke; and moussaka were the top-scoring words. As Jed explained, while we do not resile from being associated with Greece’s best-loved dish, or indeed America’s best-loved drink, or indeed the world’s oldest profession, we must take as a v. serious warning the fact that we are now associated with large boats. We are therefore beginning Operation Humble Pie, to de-yachtify the Tory image and again become the party of ordinary Britons.

Monday I knew it! It’s always something to do with the Bullingdon. A note arrived this morning from Mr Rothschild, marked Attention Gideon: ‘That’ll teach you for rolling me down a hill in a Portaloo.’ Not sure I should give it to him, he’s already in a foul mood. There’s been a terrible to-do between him and Dave, according to Jenny, who was listening through the wall using one of Gary’s funny earpieces. Dave demanded to know whether there was anything else Gids should tell him about his Greek holiday. ‘Did you and Fran go snorkelling with Osama bin Laden by any chance?’ Jenny says he’s just jealous that Gids has more rich friends than him now. Personally, I think we could stop all this if we told the truth.

Louise Doughty, one of the judges of this year’s Man Booker Prize and a fine novelist herself, said it best. Novelists, she remarked, are generally shy-ish, observing sorts of people; pushing them on stage, or under a spotlight, is a bit like asking a badger to tap-dance. My tap-dancing badger moment began ten weeks ago, when at a computer in an internet café in a remote Swiss valley I discovered that my novel The Northern Clemency had been longlisted for the Booker. The badger went into double time when it got on the shortlist, and now I’m writing on the afternoon of the dinner itself. (I feel quite safe sucking up to Louise, by the way, since by the time this comes out, it will be far too late for sycophancy to make a difference either way.