Plotters routed

We were told that seven ministers were going to resign, that Ruth Kelly's was just the first in a series of departures which would deliver a crushing blow to the Prime Minister's authority. We were told that others, including John Hutton, would refuse to serve or be moved. And today, Gordon Brown has stuck a triumphant two fingers up to the lot of them.

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.

You can read more of my thoughts on the past week in politics - and where it leaves David Cameron - in my Journal column which will be posted here tomorrow as usual.

Reshuffle kremlinology

One for Labour kremlinologists, this, but the return of Peter Mandelson and Nick Brown to the Cabinet at the same time is significant. These two were the main protagonists in the briefing war that was fought between the Blair-Brown camps in the ‘94 leadership battle and afterwards. Bringing them both back into the Cabinet together could be seen as the ultimate healing gesture by Gordon - which is I suspect how it will be seen within the PLP.

More on the reshuffle later, and in tomorrow's Journal column.

Digital Team of the Year

I rarely blog about work stuff, but last night our company, Associated Northcliffe Digital, was named Digital Team of the Year at the Newspaper Society Digital Media and Advertising Awards. Its stable included the memorial site Lasting Tribute which I helped launch last year, green platform Big Green Switch, and my current baby, journalism jobs and news site HoldtheFrontPage.

Since our original entry went in, these sites have been split between different parts of the business so the team no longer exists in the same form, but I'm sure the good work will go on. Congratulations all.

More on this (with pics) from work colleagues and fellow bloggers Lactose and Alex.

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?