What a difference a week makes in politics. Only seven days ago the Tories were engaged in one of their ritualistic internal bloodbaths.

In the one corner were the Bed Blockers — old hands who had overstayed their welcome in safe seats, and spending too much time on foreign fact-finding missions, or “jollies”.

In the other corner were the ambitious Young Turks — the “Notting Hill set” of Tories who share the fashionable West London postcode. The charge against the Notting Hill set was led by Derek Conway, 51, who replaced the most famous bed blocker of them all, the octogenarian Sir Edward Heath as the Tory MP for Old Bexley & Sidcup.

Conway, who was enraged at being lumped in with the old lags in unattributable briefings in national newspapers, said: “They sit around in these curious little bistros in London, drink themselves silly and wish they were doing what the rest of us are getting on with.” So, surprise, surprise to find Conway, a highly respected backbencher, taking a more conciliatory tone in the Knutsford Guardian.

The newspaper is the constituency organ of George Osborne, 33, the Tory MP for Tatton. The St Paul’s and Oxford-educated scion of the Osborne & Little interior design family is the uncrowned Prince of the Notting Hill set.

“George is an extraordinarily able MP and I don’t consider him the sort to sit around drinking himself silly,” said Conway. “He is very clever and good company.”

Conway (Gateshead Technical College and Newcastle Polytechnic) added: “I believe his (Osborne’s) future will be as a substantial national leader.”

Osborne was curiously unavailable for comment.

Sibling success

KENNETH BRANAGH’S sister has landed one of the top jobs in regional theatre. Joyce Branagh has been appointed literary director of the reopened Watford Palace Theatre.

The Palace is a leading originator of new theatre in the region, with many plays going on to the West End.

La Branagh, 35, cut her teeth at London’s Orange Tree Theatre as a trainee director three years ago. She began directing in 1995 but was known as Joyce Harper — her mother’s maiden name — to avoid the pitfalls of having dramatic ambitions while being the sister of a leading actor-director. Will she eclipse her brother? That is the question.

Rickman's roots

CELEBRITY watch at the Edinburgh Festival. Alan Rickman, the dastardly Professor Snape in the Harry Potter films, has returned to his acting roots. He made his stage debut at the Edinburgh Assembly Rooms in 1976 in Ben Johnson’s The Devil is an Ass. He is in town to see Christian Slater, his friend from Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves, who has recovered from chickenpox and is now in One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest.

First you saw it...

MARK BORKOWSKI’S stunts in the PR world include letting live scorpions loose at the BBC and staging the world’s biggest custard-pie fight in the Millennium Dome — the first real entertainment there. But he came unstuck at the Edinburgh Fringe yesterday. He was recalling his days with Archaos, a circus troupe whose chainsaw-wielding act was banned. Minutes before the lights went down his saw was confiscated.

Chalabi still has one American friend

AHMED CHALABI, the former pal of the Pentagon who has returned home to Iraq to face counterfeiting charges, still has one defender in the US media — this year’s Pulitzer prizewinner Lowell Bergman. The former 60 Minutes producer spoke up for Chalabi at a summer school for investigative journalism in London. He said that even if Chalabi had used the US media, he had at least helped to topple Saddam.

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