Dan Hodges with London Assembly candidate Julie Redmond and Gio Spinella, the Camden Tories’ leader

THE narrative loop on this one is too delicious not to mention.

On Tuesday evening we found Mail on Sunday columnist Dan Hodges enjoying being the guest of honour at a Conservative Christmas party.

Maybe that shouldn’t be such a surprise, but the twist was the celebratory meal at Bradley’s in Swiss Cottage was organised by the local association in Hampstead and Highgate – the constituency where his late mother served as a Labour MP for more than 20 years. That was Glenda Jackson, who he explained had hired him as a researcher when she first came through as a candidate in the area in 1991.

“I like to say I was a ‘nepo baby’ before it was fashionable,” he told guests.

Later Mr Hodges said Ms Jackson would have said she was “very proud of him” if she could see him speaking at the event.

She certainly would have been proud at the number of times he made a few of the guests wince with reminders of how she used to thump her Tory rivals at the ballot box.

Explaining his own political journey, Mr Hodges said he “was a card-carrying member of the Tony Blair fan club” – the PM who Ms Jackson did not always see eye to eye with.

But he also quipped he had been “nervous because, speaking to Hampstead and Highgate Conservatives, I was conscious I was speaking to an audience that might be a little bit left-wing for me.”