The key to this reshuffle, for Gordon, was to find a way of demonstrating that he can unite the Labour Party and thereby isolating the rebels. Today he has done that - and then some.
Gordon's tactic from the start was to find a senior Blairite who would be prepared to join his team and help heal the party's wounds. Alan Milburn rebuffed him, while Charles Clarke simply rubbished him, but what did Gordon do? He recruited the archest Blairite of them all.
As a demonstration of "if at first you don't succeed, try, try again" it could scarcely be bettered. If he'd persuaded Mr Tony himself to come back as Foreign Secretary, then maybe - but getting Peter Mandelson on board as Business Secretary was surely the next best thing.
The message to the rebels is unmistakable. To paraphrase Chapter Eight of the Book of Romans - if Mandy Mandelson, Maggie Beckett, Dolly Draper, Ali Campbell and yes, John Hutton are all for me, then who can be against me?
In other words, relative political nonentities such as Joan Ryan, Graham Stringer and Siobhain McDisloyal have been put very firmly in their place.
It's not perfect. I'd like to have seen Jon Cruddas given the housing job, while I think the very talented and articulate Shaun Woodward is wasted at Northern Ireland - and you don't often see those two guys praised in the same sentence.
But that apart, this is a cracking reshuffle which demonstrates Brown using the power of incumbency to absolute maximum effect to make both the Tories and the rebels look irrelevant. The public loves a fighter, and Brown is fighting, fighting and fighting again to save the party he loves.
