With New Labour’s finances in the toilet (’only 17 people gave the party more than £1,000 in the first quarter of this year’), they’re having a little auction as a fundraiser. I liked this bit:

Richard Caborn, former sports minister and patron of the dinner, said yesterday: “We are offering a series of prizes which money cannot normally buy.”

Surely, that was what got the party into trouble in the first place, offering stuff money cannot normally buy. You know, cash for the honour of…?

One of the prizes is a game of tennis with Tony Blair. While it’s nice that the former Prime Minister has offered to give up his time as Middle East peacemaker, uniter of faiths, sports supremo, financial guru, and water walker, couldn’t he have just given the money instead? Surely the time taken to pay a game of tennis translates into more Blair money than that paid by the lucky auction winner. Blair’s on, like what, a bajillion dollars an hour or something?

Other prizes include getting to be a character in Alastair Campbell’s latest work of fiction (possibly the dossier outlining the reasons for the upcoming war with Iran). ‘You will also be able to join Alastair for lunch to discuss which character you could be’. Which sounds like the kind of thing Alastair and Tony did in the run up to New Labour’s first election victory. Just pray he doesn’t portray you as a whistleblowing government scientist who, fed to a ravening media by his bosses, goes for fateful walk in the woods.

There are one or two jewels amongst the items up for auction and the rest cunningly symbolise life under New Labour - fighting, gambling, Clarksonian virility, the adoration of mediocrity and low culture, z-list celebrity, and binge drinking.