Westminster Diary

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

VALENTINE'S DAY MASSACRE

It's all over between these two, apparently...

It was a love that could never be. Harriet Harman and Alan Duncan have delighted in trading flirtatious banter since Mr Duncan took over as shadow leader of the house. The sparks flew as they met across the despatch box. He called her "a gentle flower of the aristocracy who has so aggressively embraced the working classes". She teased him about his dress sense and his wristwatch she said was a gift from the Sultan of Oman. They offered to buy each other Valentine's cards.

But now, like so many cross party liaisons, it has all ended in tears. Ms Harman thought her dapper, diminutive Tory beau was different.

Her friends tried to warn her, she told MPs on Thursday '"They said, "He's just a Tory. He's the same as all the others," but I said, "No, I think he's different." I even bought him a Valentine's card, and I thought he might buy me, or rather get me, a little trinket from the Sultan of Oman.

"It is clear now that he is the same as all the others. He does not see things in the way that I do, and he does not believe in the things that I do - he does not believe in helping people, if they get into difficulties; I do. We started off well at the beginning of the year, but it's over!".

Mr Duncan's other half, James Dunheath, who entered into a civil partnership with him last year, will no doubt be heaving a sigh of relief. Not to mention Ms Harman's husband, tough-talking union boss Jack Dromey...

WILL THE LIGHTS BE DIMMED IN DOWNING STREET?

That old romantic Gordon Brown is not taking any chances with his Valentine Day plans. Quizzed on BBC Radio about what he had in store for wife Sarah on Saturday, he was more than a little cagey. "I will tell you off air," said the prime minister nervously. "She might be listening". She might indeed, although the fact that it was BBC Radio Coventry suggests, equally, that she might not.

BLOOMING CHEEK

Mandelson is a 'tender red rose'

Lord Mandelson was on typically imperious form on Thursday at a breakfast for Labour bloggers. Even the sight of his old sparring partner John Prescott on a giant video screen barking out a series of increasingly surreal taunts - "Are you sensitive to the touch, Peter?," asked the old bruiser at one point - did not put the business secretary off his stride. The internet, he declared, would let a "thousand flowers bloom," from "booming hydrangeas" like Mr Prescott to "retiring, tender red roses like me..."

DRAPER'S RECORD

Mandelson's former sidekick Derek Draper, who organised the event, was in a more combative mood. His arrival on the blogging scene, with the Labourlist site, has stirred up a hornet's nest of controversy. The former spin doctor's latest blog entry threatens legal action over claims he was not entirely transparent over where he gained his professional qualifications. Mr Draper says he has never claimed to have studied at the prestigious Berkeley campus at the University of California, merely that he that he gained an MA in clinical psychology "from a school in Berkeley"...

TITANIC TYPO

The affable Ramesh Chabra - who recently became special adviser to George Osborne in a reshuffle of Tory backroom staff - must be especially keen to please his party leader at the moment. Either that or he has recently been viewing the film Titanic. On Thursday, he sent out a quote to journalists on the shock departure of Sir James Crosby from the FSA, which began: "If going on the fact the FSA had concerns about HBOS pre-dating allegations about Sir James Cameron".

TIMELY REPORT

And what else should land, with immaculate timing, on the desk of journalists covering the Crosby controversy this week? Why it's only the Financial Services Authority's Financial Risk Outlook report. The words horse, stable door and bolted spring to mind...

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