Ever the buffoon

It is of course right that Sir Ian Blair is to stand down as Metropolitan Police Commissioner. He arguably should have done so in July 2005 as soon as it became clear that his force had fired seven bullets into the head of an innocent man and that he had given a misleading account of the circumstances surrounding it. He should certainly have done so last November when the force was found guilty of health and safety offences in relation to the said shooting.

But the circumstances of Sir Ian's resignation yesterday - effectively sacked by the Mayor of London Boris Johnson on his first day as chairman of the police authority - raises issues not just about Sir Ian's fitness for the job of Commissioner, but also about Mr Johnson's fitness for the job of Mayor.

As the increasingly impressive Jacqui Smith pointed out in a Question Time performance of cool, controlled anger, there is a clear procedure in place for the removal of a Commissioner involving the police authority - not just its chairman - making a recommendation to that effect to the Home Secretary.

By failing to follow this procedure, and behaving instead like a tinpot dictator, Mr Johnson has not only managed the considerable feat of inducing sympathy for Sir Ian Blair, he has demonstrated once again his deep and ineradicable buffoonery.

Limited reshuffle predictions

So Gordon Brown is enjoying a new surge in popularity and there won't be a big reshuffle after all. How times change.

One is reminded of Harold Macmillan's famous saying about "Events, dear boy, events." Of course when he said it, he was referring to the dangers that can beset a government and blow it off course, but the past couple of weeks have shown that "events" can sometimes come to a government's rescue, too.

And so to the reshuffle. Instead of fantasising about replacing Alistair Darling with Ed Balls - and let's be thankful for Labour's sake that it remained in the realms of fantasy - Mr Brown is instead to carry out some limited changes to the lower reaches of his Cabinet.

Here are three potential scenarios, depending on how "limited" Mr Brown wants to be.

The not-very-limited-at-all reshuffle

Tony McNulty to become Transport Secretary
Jim Murphy to become Nations and Regions Secretary
Shaun Woodward to become Minister for the Cabinet Office
Ed Miliband to become Business Secretary
John Hutton to become Defence Secretary
Nick Brown to become Chief Whip
Paul Murphy, Des Browne, Geoff Hoon and Ruth Kelly to leave the government

The fairly limited reshuffle

Ed Miliband to become Transport Secretary
Paul Murphy to become Nations and Regions Secretary
Shaun Woodward to become Minister for the Cabinet Office
Ruth Kelly to leave the government

The extremely limited reshuffle

Tony McNulty to become Transport Secretary
Ruth Kelly to leave the government

October 3 Debrief: Well, I was right about, Hutton, Nick Brown and Des Browne, wrong about everyone else. C'est la vie.

Is this one reason to vote Tory?

Setting tribalism aside for a moment, I have to applaud the Tories for thinking outside the box and refusing to go along with the conventional wisdom on airport expansion. Instead of a third runway at Heathrow, they plan to build a new high speed rail link to the Midlands and the North.

To hear the Conservatives actually advocating major investment in (a) rail infrastructure, and (b) the North of England was a real breath of fresh air and shows how much politics has been turned on its head since the 1980s and 1990s when both would have been anathema. Much more of this sort of thing and I might even vote for them.

My only criticism of the plan was that the Tories' proposed new high-speed rail route appears to run only from London to Birmingham to Manchester to Leeds. What about Newcastle, Dave?

Conference cartoon

Last week's story about the Tory conference delegates being offered discount vouchers for a lap-dancing club in Birmingham inspired this Slob cartoon to mark their annual conference in the second city.

Hopefully I'll get around to some serious analysis of the Tory gathering at some point this week...