Gordon Brown has said, about a thousand times and counting, that he wanted to create a government of all the talents. It sounded tantalising. What would it look like? Like the Spice Girls but with policies?

This is politics and so clowns are a given. But what about those people who can recite phone numbers backwards?

I went to Downing Street to see the talent. All Cabinet members have to do the “walk of fame”. This is both very short, and very long, at the same time. It is pure showbiz, with only a herbaceous border for a backdrop.

Yesterday, the undeniable star of the walk was Jacqui Smith, resplendent in a white jacket, the post-Blair must-have wardrobe item for all women in politics.

“It’s the new Home Secretary!” cried a feral beast, admiringly.

She kept walking, pretending not to have heard. She may be the Home Secretary but, at that moment, she must have felt like any woman being admired as they walk past a building site.

“Look over your shoulder,” cried the photographers. She didn’t. Home secretaries don’t need to look over their shoulders. They have people to do that for them, and they are called spies.

What is her talent? In her old job, as Chief Whip, she never spoke. Now she is replacing John Reid, whose talent was scaring the bejesus out of us.

Of course he was bald. That helps. She has too much hair to be menacing. Maybe she can juggle.

The heavy black door of No 10 kept opening as if by magic (you never see anyone actually pushing it) and the “talents” just kept walking out.

I recognised most of them and, you know, I hadn’t realised. For instance, there was: Des Browne, the Defence Secretary, whose only real talent is for disaster. When he’s in a hole, he never quits digging. Peter Hain. I’m struggling with this. He’s moved to Work and Pensions. Why? What is his talent? Being orange? Harriet Harman. She must be super-talented, for she has three jobs (party chairwoman, Minister for Women, Leader of the Commons). She often makes people want to scream, a talent of sorts. Shaun Woodward, the ex-Tory with a penchant for butlers. Doesn’t even know that Posh is a Spice because he thinks it’s normal. Unpaid.

I was beginning to realise that Gordon Brown may have been misleading. It won’t be the first time. (Remember the last Budget?) Surely what he meant to say was that he was creating a government of all the hidden talents. Actually, make that subterranean. You need to be a potholer to find them.

There are exceptions. Take the Amazing Miliband Boys. “Are they twins?” asked a photographer as they emerged yesterday. No, but they could be. Dave (Foreign Secretary, aged 41¾) and Ed (Cabinet Office Thingymabob, aged 36) posed in the street, their black hair sticking up in alarm.

When they left, their stovepipe legs carried them so fast that their protection men had to race to catch up. If they were in a circus, they wouldn’t need stilts.

It is always a bit of a shock to see Alistair Darling. Those caterpillar eyebrows! The new Chancellor is extremely talented, as those of us who have watched him for years know. He can take any room full of people and, within ten minutes of opening his mouth, put them to sleep. Psychologically, it’s more powerful than bending spoons. Darling: the Human Narcotic.

Mr Brown has appointed lots of people who aren’t in the Cabinet but who attend the Cabinet. These include the husband-and-wife team Ed Balls (in) and Yvette Cooper (can attend).

I find it amazing that, of all the people in Britain, so much talent can be found in one family. Mr Balls is the leader of a cult that worships post-neoclassical endogenous growth theory.

Then there is Hazel Blears, the most talented of all. She is known as the Human Battery. Experts are studying her, for she generates enough energy, just by getting out of bed, to boil a kettle.

Can the Spice Girls compete with that? I don’t think so.

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