Why John Reid is stepping down

Earlier today, like many people around Westminster, I received a text message from John Reid letting me know that he will be standing down as an MP at the next election. As sorry as I am – John was an invigorating presence on the parliamentary and Whitehall scene, and one of the few ministers who fully grasped how the world changed on 9/11 – the news does not come as an enormous surprise. For a start, he is blissfully happy in his marriage and had always talked wistfully of a time when he would be able to devote himself fully to his wife (‘I’m a happy bastard, me’). But he is also a politician with a pitiless capacity to judge when the game is up. A year ago he was seriously weighing up his leadership chances, and conspicuously declined to rule out a run at the top job in a pre-conference interview with me. He had always planned either to stand against Gordon or resign as a minister: he chose the latter path, eager not to become a focus for discontent in the Cabinet – not now, or even a year from now, but somewhere down the line when the waters became choppier for Brown. This was a typically shrewd calculation by a politician as intellectual as he is pugilistic, and now he has removed all doubt by stepping down from the Commons. He is a good man and a patriot, from whom we will definitely hear more in whatever roles he now pursues, and I for one wish him the very best of luck.