Chief whip fumes amid frivolity

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By Nick Assinder
BBC News political correspondent

It is not the job of a chief whip to look too smiley - threats and intimidation, not jokes and frivolity, are their stock in trade, after all.

Armstrong may not have seen the joke

So Labour's Hilary Armstrong always has to maintain an aggressive, "I'll-see-you-outside" demeanour during her public appearances in the Commons.

On this occasion, however, her expression looked particularly out of place.

Just about everybody else in the chamber - including the prime minister and his entire frontbench - seemed to be having a fun old time, sharing the joke about the government's double defeat last night.

Whether the attempt to laugh off the defeats is well advised may be open to question itself, but Mr Blair appears to have decided to adopt an "Oops. But that's life" approach - at least in public.

Slapped down

But, if Ms Armstrong was feeling nervous about her position before question time she could have been forgiven for suffering a full blown attack of paranoia during the weekly prime minister's questions session.

Were they all laughing at her, perhaps?

Blair joined in the joking over defeats

As Tory leader David Cameron relished pointing out, the woman he slapped down at his first outing last year for shouting at him "like a child" was a bit subdued today.

Perhaps, he suggested, it was because she had failed to see the defeats coming and allowed the prime minister to lose on one vote - his own.

She was, said Mr Cameron, the first chief whip in history to put the prime minister in the frame for losing a key vote.

"An interesting career move, to say the least," he ventured.

That had Labour MPs - many of whom have undoubtedly fallen victim to Ms Strongarm and her henchpeople in the past - rolling in the aisles.

The swine. Couldn't they see how she was squirming.

The prime minister's jokey suggestion that he had probably better turn up to vote on his looming education bill may have added to the general air of jollity but it only made matters worse for Ms Armstrong.

As everyone else joined in the Carry On Up the Commons atmosphere, Ms Armstrong quietly (well, fairly quietly) fumed.

Something most MPs believe she will be doing from the backbenches in the not too distant future.

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