Ruth Kelly abandons ship

Mike, Brighton

Brown just can't stop himself. Last year he went to Iraq to overshadow the Tory conference.
This year he signals a reshuffle to again overshadow the Tory conference (the reshuffle to happen just after).
Credit to Kelly though. She should have resigned over the embryology bill.

Wombats we aint.

Ruth Kelly is right to engage with her 4 children, Brown may have shown his human side, but a people without a vision perish, as his old Dad would have told him, no schmalzy politics we are more discerning than that thanks. Perhaps Mandelsohn should stay out in Europe - he has the blessings of a Jew he propspers but he still needs help with his personal identity - and help the man who was a lousy Minister of Defence - ya know one of those important jobs - where experience helps? Glad Sara brought wives back into fashion. Sistahs we aint redundant alleluia!

maas101

According to Kelly, Brown knew she would step down a while ago. The timing of the announcement is a little odd. Why detract from Gordon's speech so quickly, unless of course there was another story that needed taking away from the front pages. Maybe selling British Energy to the French government is a story that Brown would rather wasn't disussed at length?

GS London

Jack Straw, though the man's politic makes me cringe, would be the best bet for Europe. Straw is - so far as I observe - the man holding the strings with a finger in every pie. Never the outright leader, never the one to make the move, but always in the background somewhere, doing something with enviable skill.

Pity, then, that the aprty couldn't organise a p*ssup in a brewery.

Ray

Perhaps now that Ruth Kelly is (or perhaps soon will be) free of Cabinet 'collective responsibility' she will find the courage to go all out on the assault over this Government's disgraceful anti-family policies.

Julian

Spend more time with her family? Does this include the kid who has been shipped off to boarding school?

AlanofEngland

Brown-nose Strawman, Buffoon, whoever gets their snout into the job must surely be sacked once there is a change of government? What with a UKIP referendum vote probably putting them in with the majority of MEP seats it should be an interesting time.

TrevorsDen

So the Presbyterian has stuck it to the Catholic then?

Mark

The Daily Mail has a different angle: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1060789/Transport-Secretary-Ruth-Kelly-resigns-Cabinet-telling-friends-disgusted-Browns-speech.html
That would explain the timing.

Max Kaye

Hoon is just the ticket for a total sell-out.

Chuck Unsworth

Good Grief! Hoon replacing Mandy? Just how much damage does Brown want to inflict on Britain?

Hoon is incompetent and untrustworthy. And you need your wits about you when dealing with those Europeans. Hoon simply isn't up to it.

Mandelson may have been a medacious little shit, but at least he stuck it to the Europeans. Hoon hasn't the wit or the bottle.

mac

Completely agree about Mandelson. A poisonous, repellant character, but his unscrupulousness and political chicanery were just the ticket for the Brussels jungle. The lazy, ineffectual, time-serving Hoon will be macerated by all and sundry in the EU, much to this country's disadvantage. How much dirt does he have on Gordo to have been bought off with this place on the gravy train?

David C

TrevorsDen:
"Jesus and no quarter"?

Chuck:
Hoon incompetent and untrustworthy is exactly
what Brown thinks as well. Personally I believe 'Buff' has a sound future - as a sandbag.

But who gets chief whip?
Having a parallel operation has been useful to Brown, but there again, the office is pretty well purged.

dr cromarty

I suppose it beats resigning to spend more time with one's money (like Blair)

Nicholas

Ruth Kelly is perhaps the least repellent of the wimmyn in Brown's junta. Pity it wasn't the arch incompetent enemy of the people Jacqui Smith, the former kitchen skills teacher now masquerading as the Home Secretary.

CS

The latest rumour is that Ruth Kelly is leaving to become a nun and that Brown's line about this being no time for a novice was a last ditch plea for her to stay.

Alfred T Mahan

Can someone enlighten me as to the rules on taking jobs after leaving ministerial office? If she thinks she'll lose her seat before long anyway, surely it makes sense to give up the ministerial car now so she still has an MP's salary while sitting out the 'gardening leave' before taking a job in, say, the transport sector. If that's what she's doing, I don't blame her.

Tiberius

Chuck: it begs the question whether one would rather be in trenches with Hoon or Mandy.

John Backhouse

And so Hoon becomes the final and greatest act of reachery. It beggars belief, though why I didn't see it coming I don't know.

And nothing but the Ruth

And another thing: EU Commissioners serve the EU Commission, not their country (the rules are explicit on this). So, whatever Mandy may have done, he was not doing it for "the service of this country".

David Short

Jumped before she was pushed.

Over-rated, over-promoted, under-talented and no achievements.

She was probably the laziest minister in the government.

Brown should have gotten rid of this minister the moment he took office.

Her appointments were made by Blair to scare the Brownites.

Can't share this enthusiasm for that other awful Blair reptile, Mandelson, and cannot see why anyone else could either.

salieri

I'm surprised there are not more posts like Julian's. A muffled titter runs round every time a Minister talks of spending more time with the family, but in this case you have to wonder exactly what has changed in RK's priorities.

Is she resigning as an MP as well as quitting the Titanic? Is her sense of familiar duty somehow different from what it was under the previous Mr. Big? Have those nasty red boxes become more onerous since the time she actually had - and wielded - real ministerial power? Is it her family she misses, or the bright lights? And if the former, why has it never troubled her before?

This was not the truth and the declared excuse was more than usually risible.

Besides, that particular cliche surely died the death after the late Alan Clark was caught tupping a South African judge's wife and 2 daughters (at the same time). There followed one of the finest quips ever heard in the Commons - a Labour backbencher but can anyone remind me who it was? - who mused "Should he not now consider his position and resign, in order to spend more time with other people's families?"

Wit was permitted in those days.

mac

@And nothing but the Ruth: Tell that to the French commissioner, the Italian commissioner, the Greek commissioner, the Spanish commissioner, and twenty two etcs.

Frank Pulley

"Ruth Kelly abandons ship".

So thats why the tide was so high at Cromer. I'll bet they'll put it down to global warming.

Verity

"So, she figured, why not run the final few metres.|

Ruth Kelly thinks in metres?

It didn't take the EUSSR and internationalists long to brainwash you, did it, Fraser?