For Those Of You Who Missed The Campaign Against Hazel

I can take the jokes.

The Independent on Sunday's "73rd most influential gay man in the United Kingdom" joined in the current round with Now No One Will Realise That I’m Nuts About Hazel: My "Nuts About Hazel" promotional T-shirt, ordered on the internet, may never now arrive. Hazel Blears has suspended sales of T-shirt novelties plugging her for Labour’s deputy leadership, amid fears (reports T-Shirt Times) that the garments may be linked to a factory disaster in Bangladesh in which 64 workers were killed when part of building collapsed. What a ghastly way to die. Imagine: the last thing you know is you’re working on a loom with a Nuts About Hazel T-shirt with a picture of her little face spread out in front of you – and then the roof falls in and everything goes black. Nobody deserves this.

Mo gives Matthew Parris a taste of her tongue

I mentioned the diminutive dynamo’s T-shirt fiasco to a senior member of the Parliamentary Labour Party this week. His response shocked me. "In the PLP," he chortled, "colleagues are saying they now see the upside to global warming. With rising sea levels, Hazel Blears will be the first to drown." And I bet he wore a yellow ribbon yesterday. I treat this Tory flippancy with the same degree of total disrespect as I treated Postman Pat's suggestion three months ago in Elephant in the Womb - Amazing Pictures that Hazel might be keeping quiet about being pregnant: Why is Hazel Blears wearing such loose frocks recently and looking (and sounding) so cheerful? Why is Hazel Blears so concerned about the Ob & Gyni at Salford? But when it comes to a concerted dirty tricks campaign to undermine the chipmunk's candidature, political jousting stops being a laughing matter.

Dobbo - looking good after a recent makeover

Obviously you can't trust a word you read in a Sunday rag that hosts Matthew Parris, but this article disturbed me: Some MPs believe that Ms Blears, an ardent supporter of Tony Blair, must not be allowed to take over from John Prescott. They say it would make it harder for Mr Brown to make a clean break with the Blair years. One supporter of the Chancellor said that Ms Blears must be "crushed" and made to come last of the six deputy leadership candidates to send a firm signal that "Blairism is dead". MPs supporting the five other candidates have begun co-operating to stop her gaining support in a bid to destroy her deputy leadership bid. They say Ms Blears's campaign is being backed by a coterie of "ultra-Blairites" and is run like a "Blairite leadership campaign". MPs supporting the other contenders for John Prescott's job - Jon Cruddas, Hilary Benn, Alan Johnson, Harriet Harman and Peter Hain - are expected to trade votes in the contest to stop Ms Blears winning. They will use their second preferences on the ballot paper to try to keep Ms Blears out.

Now that really hurts. Not least because I've a horrible feeling that the anonymous originator of the "crush Blears" comment and the anonymous originator of the "Hazel will drown" comment may transpire to be one and the same MP. Someone I once worked with and campaigned for in an earlier life as a Party Organiser and, despite his support for Jon Cruddas in the Deputy Leadership race, someone I still think of as a friend. Why do people behave like this? I was a whatsisname loyalist, but times move on and now I'm firmly behind the New Great Leader. I don't expect to be shafted because of who I supported in the past.

Hazel freshens up before facing adoring fans

I expect to be shafted for who I support now. D'oh! You know what I mean.