George Osborne and Peter Mandelson have today scandalised Westminster by announcing that they are to engage in a spot of role play. Mr Osborne has told the Guardian newspaper this morning that a future Conservative government would target greed and profligacy in the City, acting to "curb pay excesses across the financial services industry."

Meanwhile, Lord Mandelson, who is already famous for the comment that he was "intensely relaxed about being filthy rich," has been busy this summer hanging out with the billionaires David Geffen, Nat Goldsmith and Oleg Deripaska who, so far as we can tell, are not known for thinking that the 'the means of production should be in the hands of the proletariat.'

Osborne and Mandelson have been bound by mutual admiration ever since Osborne commended the way in which Mandelson 'dripped poison' (about Gordon Brown). Similarly, the ex-grammar school boy Mandelson is thought to have been beguiled by Osborne's taste in Savile Row suits and his Harrow schooling - even though Osborne's Old Etonian boss is actually rumoured to regard Harrow as the place where 'oiks and poofters hang out'.

In a joint statement the two claimed: "Cross dressing is nothing new in politics. In fact there have been a great number of MPs who have been partial to the proverbial 'fishnet and suspenders'. And as the parties of the left and right have moved closer to the centre ground over recent years it now makes perfect sense to try on eachothers political clothing to see whether this might 'turn on' a few extra members of the electorate."

Concluding the meeting, George Osborne said: "Though cowards flinch and traitors sneer, we'll keep the red flag flying here." Lord Mandelson then followed up with: "This is simply, and nothing more than, a brief moment of transtextuality... designed to get us through the next election... 

"And I would very much like to add that I am intensely relaxed about Trollope."