MONDAY

WE’VE all been invited to a smoked Camembert and Rioja evening at Number 10 to watch Jeff Bezos blast into space and celebrate Freedom Day.

As the evening progresses the atmosphere gets bouncy and boisterous and everyone is sparkling with the grape. I’m on my guard as they’re occasions like these when all the blackmailing and leaking happens.

Dopey Williamson has brought some of his Star Wars toys to show us.

“I’d love to go into space too,” he tells us. To which Gove rather cruelly responds with, “Gavin, you’ve been in space ever since you joined the Government.”

Scary Patel is staring at the screen intently. “I have an idea,” she says. “Wouldn’t it be great if we did a deal with Richard Branson and Jeff Bezos to build a special colony on Mars for illegal immigrants? They could run shuttle services each week and all the European governments would chip in a proportionate share of the overall cost.

“They would be one-way tickets and offer these poor people the chance to start a new life on a new planet.”

“Hmmm; I’m sure they’d be over the moon,” at the prospect, says the PM and there’s ingratiating chortling all round.

“They’d be over Jupiter and Saturn too,” says Gove, darkly.

TUESDAY

FREEDOM Day has turned into a bit of a downer. Both the PM and our new Health Secretary have been pinged and try to weasel their way out of self-isolation.

On the plus side, Starmer’s been affected too but, as Allegra at the Foreign Office says, “Starmer’s been self-isolating from his party since he became leader.”

She’s a sporty gel is Allegra and I noticed that Gove, newly-single and feeling frisky was trying to insinuate himself into her favours the previous night.

“I won a prize at Oxford for my essay on the economic theories of Hitzfeld and Lattek. Perhaps you could come round and discuss it with me some evening.”

“Did I not tell you that Hitzfeld is my uncle on my mother’s side? He told us that you completely mis-interpreted his game theory on the economics of re-distribution. Perhaps I could ask him along to point out all your errors,” said Allegra archly.

I like her a lot.

WEDNESDAY

WE have a little Scottish problem. Candia at Women and Equalities tells me that her trip north with Liz Truss turned into a bit of a disaster. Seems Truss told the local BBC unit that she thought Ross Thomson, our man in Scotia, would be the next First Minister.

“Thomson was sitting beside her,” she said, “but the minister, already forgetting what he looked like, mistook him for a waiter and ordered him to fetch her a skinny decaff latte. It was all rather embarrassing.

“And when the mistake was pointed out to her she said that Thomson’s cheery acceptance of the slight was a great example of Scotland’s fruitful relationship with England.”

THURSDAY

THE PM is absolutely livid about Dawn Butler calling him a liar in the Commons. Penny at the Home Office says she’ll meet me at The Spectator’s weekly bacchanal that night and tell me all. The Speccie have made it a special refugee-themed, fancy-dress fundraiser to help Nigel Farage who’s feeling the pinch after a few investments went south.

I put on a battered soft hat with a soiled donkey-jacket which I coat with fish-paste and salted water to add some authenticity to my effort.

Penny tells me that the PM summoned Starmer to his office and tore a strip off him.

“Why can’t you exert more control over these extremist roasters in your party?” the PM fumed.

“I didn’t know she was in my party,” says Starmer. “I thought she was one of the SNP mob.”

“One of the reasons we got you that job was so that you’d root out these Corbyn types. I’ve ordered the private secretary to write a statement for you in which you suspend her, pending an investigation into her accounting practices. MI5 have promised to do the needful.”

FRIDAY

WE have a problem. Some scoundrel has filmed Patel making her comments about firing refugees into space on a one-way ticket. It gets worse. Later the same evening she turned up at Heston Blumenthal’s in The Mandarin Oriental somewhat howling with the rocket fuel.

There she loudly proclaimed that she and Farage were planning special, refugee-spotting boat-tours around the south coast for parties of 10, paying £500 a pop. An on-board meal of artisan pies accompanied by an audacious wine selection would be provided with Farage giving a running commentary on how we must do our utmost to police these waters.

That rabid, pro-independence Scottish rag has splashed the story all over its front with Patel done up like Captain Horatio Hornblower and the heading “QUICHE OVER TROUBLED WATERS”.