Gordon goes for youth

Gordon's first enforced reshuffle is now almost complete and it is clear he won't be doing either of the things that I urged in my previous post - abolishing the almost-meaningless post of Welsh Secretary along with the other territorial posts, and bringing back a heavyweight from the Blair years to bolster his flagging administration.

Instead, he seems to have taken the opportunity to underline one of the key themes that marked his first attempt at Cabinet-making last July - that we are now in the throes of the transition from one Labour generation to the next.

James Purnell, Andy Burnham and Yvette Cooper, the three main beneficiaries of today's changes, are all in their 30s. All have been spoken about at one time or another as potential leaders of the party, and to paraphrase Tony Blair, clearly they are the future now.

Brown had the opportunity to bring back Alan Milburn, or David Blunkett, or Charles Clarke, and he passed on it. It means they are almost certainly now not returning to the Cabinet table.

I know very little about Andy Burnham, and I am indifferent to the charms of James Purnell, but Yvette Cooper is someone I have always rated highly. Regular readers of this blog will know that I regard her as the premier politician in the Balls household, and the likeliest to make it to the top of the greasy pole.

It is reasonably well-known that Blair spitefully delayed her promotion to the Cabinet as a way of getting back at Ed Balls, but what is less well-known is that her early career in government was hampereed by chronic fatigue syndrome. To successfully come back from that is no mean feat in itself.

The predictable choice of 59-year-old retread Paul Murphy to the Welsh Office appears to fly in the face of the accent on youth, but it just may be the case that this is intended to be a relatively short-term appointment.

I still believe that a restructuring of the territorial posts into a "Department for Devolution" is on the cards at some point, if only for the reason that the current situation is pretty indefensible.

A couple of other aspects of the reshuffle have thus far passed relatively unnoticed, so I shall briefly mention them. Stephen Timms, a member of the Blair Cabinet who was unaccountably excluded by Brown, returns in Caroline Flint's old role of Pensions Minister.

And finally....there's a new role in the Cabinet Office for blogger Tom Watson, the man who once said he would never return to government, although it later became clear he was taking the michael.