As the Labour Party conference begins to wind down in Brighton, poor people in the developing world made a shameless attempt to push Gordon Brown and the Labour fightback from the front pages by dying in droves from a variety of natural disasters.
Thousands are believed to have died in a tragic publicity stunt on the Indonesian island of Sumatra in the wake of a earthquake measuring 7.6 on the publicity scale. As more tremors rocked buildings in the shattered city of Padang, a health ministry spokesman put the known death toll at 529, adding that helicopters and camera crews were still trying to reach outlying towns and villages to ask the survivors what they thought of Labour Party members pushing through changes in the selection of National Policy Forum members.
Meanwhile, as South-East Asia mourns the 383 victims of typhoon Ketsana, rescue organisers declared themselves so pleased with the three column inches the story has stolen from Labour that they are planning to unveil a sequel later today.
And the news that the official death toll of 146 victims of the six-metre tsumanis that struck Samoa on Tuesday was likely to rise by several hundred was sufficient to relegate David Miliband's spirited attack on the Sun's withdrawal of support to a mere two sentences at the tail-end of a lunchtime news bulletin on BBC Radio 6.
Conference organisers are reported to be furious at the effrontery of the third world's blatant publicity-seeking efforts.
"This is an outrageous attempt to steal our thunder," said one party insider. "Not to mention our torrential rain, mudslides, towering waves of death and yawning chasms. I wouldn't be in the least bit surprised if David Cameron wasn't behind it all."
"Save the planet, vote Labour," he added hopefully.
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