Reshuffle rumours

If Labour does as badly as the polls suggest it will on May 1st, one of the few options left to Gordon Brown will be to reshuffle his cabinet. Today’s Mirror predicts that this will see Alan Johnson become the government front man and chief whip while Hoon moves to BER and John Hutton to another big cabinet job. (There was talk recently that Hutton might go to defence.)  In truth, this is hardly a dramatic reshuffle—the holders of the four great offices of state would remain the same—and it seems aimed at remedying the fact that Alan Johnson didn’t win the deputy leadership more than anything else.