Reshuffle rumour of the day

Grunt

The Home Office is the graveyard of Ministerial ambition - however, after Miliband's yellow moment last year, this must be considered irrelevant.

Liz Brown

moving deckchairs on the Titanic will save the world

TrevorsDen

Where do you go for a drink after you have drunk in the Last Chance Saloon?

The Watcher

There will be a reshuffle after the Euros, but Smith will use it to bow out of politics as the sacrificial lamb for the poll meltdown the previous week. I think she wanted to go in the wake of porngate but it would have overshadowed Brown's precious G20.

logdon

TrevorsDen
April 26th, 2009 11:27am

I'd say a special AA meeting dealing with profligacy and how it ruins lives and a nation's health. Then a twelve step programme on how to wean off this addictive disease. This applies to both the personal of outrageous MP spending and corporate of pouring money down an open sewer.

TomTom

Hope Miliband has bought his bathplug so he doesn't go down the hole!

Verity

Jacqui Smith is not the sacrificial type. She'll have to be winched out. They may even have to resort to dynamite.

donald fraser

Gordon Brown’s future depends on some evidence of an economic recovery before calling a General Election. The evidence must be tangible but it does not have to be home-grown. The American economy is predicted to recover before the UK’s. There is reasonable hope America’s recovery will start before the British Elections. So Brown’s best strategy is to position his team to focus on pumping Anglo-American relations in a way that maximises how America’s recovery can help.

Barack Obama sees Europe differently from Clinton and Bush. Clinton studied at Oxford and Bush willingly sacrificed the old guard of British Tories (new Libyan ties) to forge a military alliance with Tony Blair. In contrast Barack singled out the Kennedy legacy by his proposed location to deliver a speech in Germany at the Brandenburg Gate. If the American economy recovers before the UK, it may be unacceptable for him to secure Pound Sterling’s future.

Peter Mandelson as Foreign Secretary has the right connections to convince the Germans to invite Britain into the Euro. This is not an easy task since British banks are more heavily exposed to honour the sub-prime debts. It would swing on whether Barack Obama favours it, both to provide guarantees to the Germans and to threaten to pull the rug out from under the UK if not.

Since military strategists on both sides of the Atlantic remain in favour of it, what is the ability of the UK to budget for new nuclear defence procurement policy? Peter Mandelson as Foreign Secretary could begin budgetary discussions to do so, in Euros but not in Sterling. It does not mean that talks regarding “ballpark figures” to upgrade Trident need to be held in public. In 2007 Tony Blair won a parliamentary vote to upgrade and that is enough to make this current government policy.

It would be enough if Peter Mandelson ensures any sight of an American economic recovery is seen as presaging a British one. The gamble for the Labour Party would be that a clear statement of intent to join the Euro would then be required in the election manifesto. Without it Barack Obama cannot ask Germany to offer potentially favourable terms to the British economy if it joins. Without that there would be insufficient global speculation on Britain’s economic resurgence to ensure the Labour party’s re-election.

The popular vote against Britain joining the Euro is split between UKIP’s forthrightness and the Conservative’s wait-and-see approach. A pro-European Monetary Union Labour Manifesto is not a big a gamble given current circumstances and Peter Mandelson as foreign secretary would be a step to it.

Tiberius

Winched out, Verity?

I reckon a fireman's lift would do the job, especially if it preserved the appearance of her ample cleavage.

Verity

Another stream of consciousness lefty drivel from Donald Fraser.

Tiberius - Well, now I'm torn. Yes, she could be carried down a ladder on the back of a "firefighter", and extra humour could be brought to the episode by choosing a politically correct female Muslim firefighter dressed the newly designed "uniform", which consists of a burqa and a hijab. Much hilarity as Smith keeps slipping down the firefighter's back as she trips over her burqa on the ladder and her hijab slips over her eyes.

Your suggestion has merit. However, seeing Jacqui Smith being winched out of a window of the HoC on a crane and lowered to the street would add to the merriment of the nation. (So would your idea, though. Just as long as she makes a joke exit.)

Michael Booth

Lord Mandelson would make an excellent foreign secretary with all his experience of foreign affairs.............

donald fraser

To verity. Novels in which stream of consciousness plays an important role include James Joyce's Ulysses (1922), William Faulkner's The Sound and the Fury (1929), and Virginia Woolf's The Waves (1931).

While they are not your average airport bestseller, the Spectator magazine rightly prides itself on above average analysis. Am I to assume your own contribution to the debate (winching the home secretary out of a window) and the merit you shower upon Tiberius (who regards her ample cleavage as pertinent) is not drivel?

The literary technique, a stream of consciousness, is a deliberate effect won only by careful crafting. So I can accept it partly as a compliment. My short comment took several hours to write on a word-processor because of the many revisions involved to reach a satisfactory conclusion. However our subject is politics and closely aligned to philosophy, so your literary reference is deliberately gauche.

You might as well apply the same term to disarm all of Nietzsche’s arguments. I readily accept my writing is impenetrable for many who read it, but left-wing? Please do me the credit of reading it with your serious hat on. If you find something illogical, single it out by true and plain criticism. Otherwise you are merely encouraging others to disdain what they might not understand by a first reading.