Simon Hoggart's Sketch

New Labour is a daisy chain of hatred. Start by plucking one flower at random. Jack Straw hates David Blunkett, who he thinks is trashing everything he, Straw, did at the Home Office. Blunkett is disliked and mistrusted by Gordon Brown, because No 10 is trying to build the home secretary up as Blair's replacement.

Gordon Brown and Robin Cook hate each other for some obscure, distant reason already lost in Caledonian mists. Cook also hates Peter Mandelson, but then so does everyone else.

You may wonder where the chancellor and the prime minister come into this. They deeply resent and mistrust each other, but like conjoined twins (they share a heart of stone) who know that one can survive only at the expense of the other's life. In this case, of course, there are no parents to take the terrible decision, so it's going to be nasty. It already is.

Mr Blunkett, who yesterday introduced a white paper on immigration, asylum and nationality, must have been delighted to to be cheered and applauded by so many MPs. His speech was a huge success. Admittedly, his fans were Conservative MPs, but when you live in a snake pit, sometimes you have to ally with the mongoose.

The home secretary came to the dispatch box without his dog Lucy, but with a vast yellow braille printout of his statement. You knew he was sincere; he felt every word.

There must be laws which will mean new immigrants have to understand English and have a basic knowledge of our society, he said. "Hear, hear!" the Tories yelled.

"We will modernise the oath of allegiance, to make clear the fundamental rights and duties of citizenship!" he went on.

"That's very good!" a Tory shouted.

"Secure removal centres will enable us to protect the integrity of the system," Mr Blunkett said.

"Excellent!"; "Yah, yah!", "that's bloody good, well done!" The opposition was loving every moment.

Labour MPs were eerily quiet. "It's very nice to have the support of the opposition," Mr Blunkett said. The silence behind him continued. Finally, Andrew Mackinlay shouted "and this side too!" which was valuable, since Mr Mackinlay is no brown-noser, but he came in too little and too late.

The gist of Mr Blunkett's talk was that he had inherited a terrible mess and was finally doing something about it. Normally he would have blamed 18 years of Tory misrule for this situation, but not yesterday. It was left hanging in the air, but we were clearly meant to let the word "Straw" creep into our consciousness.

Oliver Letwin, the shadow home secretary, seems to agree with Mr Blunkett on everything, except that he probably thinks the home secretary is even more perfect than the home secretary does himself.

He has only terribly tiny criticisms. (He reminds me of those old hack motoring correspondents, who'd write: "If there's one thing wrong with this magnificent British roadster, the ashtray could be slightly larger"). He congratulated him on tackling "the causes of the shambles he gallantly admitted he has inherited from his predecessor."

Mr Blunkett tried weakly to blame the Tories for the shambles, but you could tell his heart wasn't in it.

"You will have the backing of the whole house in bringing order to your predecessor's chaos!" Mr Letwin merrily continued.

Dennis Skinner looked ill. He called Mr Letwin "the home secretary's puppet," which provided a new daisy chain: Straw v Blunkett v Skinner v Letwin. These are cross-party floral tributes, which garland the whole house.