Goodbye Charlie

If it is true (and I believe the Sun has denied it, so it may well be) that Cardes Clanke offered his resignation over the scandal of insufficient deportations but was refused, we now know why. The Vicar of Downing Street was saving him up for a more opportune moment. It is not as yet clear whether Clanke was offered a different Cabinet post in which to be the best man for cleaning up his own mess, or was simply and summarily retrobencherated; but since he has been replaced at the Home Office by the Minister for Pre-emptive Quagmiry, John Reid, there seems little cause for rejoicing. Reid made a speech last month in which he noted that the Government and its fellow crusaders for righteousness are being "hamstrung" by international law, and that "something none of us are thinking about at the moment" might be poised to leap out of the woodwork and attack us at some necessarily unspecified time in the future. This does not seem to bode well for a sane perspective on identity cards, police powers or "legislative and regulatory reform". Reid will be replaced as Minister for Invasive Democratisation by Des Browne, whose experience as Minister of State for Nationality, Immigration and Asylum will doubtless have fostered the necessary firmness of attitude towards foreigners. More recently, Browne has been Parliamentary Private Secretary to Adam Ingram, the Armed Forces Minister; and, since last May, Chief Secretary to the Treasury. Presumably, then, he knows both what a cruise missile does and what it costs the taxpayer. This is certainly encouraging.

In other news, the empty suit leaves the Foreign Office to become an empty chair as Leader of the Commons, and is replaced by tactful Bomber Hoon for Europe and by Margaret Beckett for the rest of the world. Beckett has spent the last four years and eleven months as minister for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, which is obviously a good start. Before the local elections disaster, there was some speculation that the Vicar of Downing Street might wish to split the Home Office, since it had become too unwieldy and bureaucratic even for someone of Charles Clarke's calibre. Never one to be swayed by good advice, his reverence has apparently decided to split the Foreign Office instead, even beyond the split he imposed when he appointed himself Minister for Transatlantic Self-Abasement.