One of the changes in the Cabinet reshuffle that has drawn the most speculation has been that of Jack Straw from the Foreign Office to the position of Leader of House of Commons, as Justin of Chicken Yoghurt fame notes here:

Question: Why has Jack Straw gone? Is it because he ruled out bombing Iran and you want to keep that option on the table? What did he do wrong?

Tony Blair: He was my campaign manager to become Leader of the Labour Party, and what he will do as Leader of the House is far more than the traditional Leader of the House role. He will effectively oversee what is a difficult programme being carried through Parliament (party political content) and any notion that it is linked to a decision about invading Iran - which incidentally we are not going to do - any notion that it is linked to a such a decision is utterly absurd.

There does seem to be some genuine puzzlement surrounding Jack’s apparent demotion to a lesser position in Government, even if Leader of the House is the usual halfway house that former incumbents of one of the big three Ministerial positions (Chancellor, Home Secretary, Foreign Secretary) tend to enter on their way to being put out to pasture - after all, he and Condi did seem to be getting along just fine only a few short weeks ago.

Of course, a little background research offers up an alternative explanation for Jack’s sudden change of position - in addition to the general business of organising and timetabling the Government’s legislative programme, the one clear policy role that falls to the Leader of the House is that of dealing with reforms to the working arrangements and practices of Parliament - which conveniently includes the little matter of the future composition and role of the House of Lords.

Knowing this, one of course becomes rather curious as to exact how Jack stands on this issue - or to be more specific, how he voted in February 2003, when the matter of the composition of the second chamber was last put to the vote; for which I’m endebted (as usual) to the efforts of the Public Whip in making this information readily available…

…and get what we find? Go on, have a guess…

Yes, if you guessed that dear old Jack, voted for a completely appointed House of Lords, and against any of the three options which would have given either a fully elected second chamber or one with a majority of elected members, then you’d be absolutely spot-on - just check out his voting record here…

With Harriet Harman out of loop on reform of the House of Lords following her husbands bout of whistle-blowing on the cash for peerages issue, and Blair’s favourite Minister for Shite, Charlie Falconer, still running the show at the Department for Constitutional Affairs, we now find that the Ministers who will take a key role in steering the process of the reforming the Lords are all opposed to anything other than an appointed second chamber - just like their boss, Tony.

Oh dear, what a surprise…

From the Beeb:

The European Commission is to propose more majority voting on police and justice matters.

The proposals, to be presented on Wednesday, would shift the legal basis for decisions in areas including terrorism and organised crime.

Up to now decisions in these areas have been made by unanimous agreement among the 25 member states.

That’s not the good bit, however - this is:

The President of the European Commission, Jose Manuel Barroso, said that a large number of the decisions in the fields of justice, freedom and security could be "dealt with more effectively at European level than at national level".

"Security is increasingly becoming a concern of people in Europe. But it is a concern that is accompanied by a feeling of certainty that has been clearly expressed during the debates over the last year: the most effective response in the field of security is the European response," he said in a speech in Portugal.

"People are asking for ‘more Europe’ in order to combat terrorism and organised crime. It is our duty to respond to this appeal, with or without a constitution."

And which people are these, because I haven’t met any of them lately.

WTF is going here - has Tony loaned him Alistair Campbell for a while?

There’s a couple of, to the say least, interesting rumours/allegations doing the rounds locally in relation to last weeks elections in the Tipton area, which returned BNP councillors in two of the three wards contested.

The one I’m happy to pass-on at the moment, relates to a former Labour Party member who defected to the Tories after failing to make the local panel of candidates a couple of years ago in order to stand - unsuccessfully - for election as a councillor, and who was seen on the night of the election shaking hands with the BNP candidate who won the seat.

(In case you’re wondering, this kind of ’switching horses’ in order to secure a nomination is not so unusual at local level - there are always a few whose personal ambition to become a councillor at all costs will override any notion of political loyalities - one of the more memorable one’s, locally, was a particular individual who jumped to the Tories to secure a nomination after - again - being turned down by the local Labour Party. What made this one particularly interesting was that one of main reasons that Labour declined to put him forward was the discovery that his wife appeared on the register of electors no less than three times, under different names and at different addresses, something which, it appeared, held no particular concerns for the local Tory Party.)

What makes this particular handshake interesting is not only that there is a bit of a history of there being a lack of ‘clear water’ between some of the Tories in Tipton and far-right parties - on at least one occasion I can recall, a candidate who had stood for the Tories in previous years shipped up as a candidate for the far-right ‘Freedom Party’ in a local election - and persistant rumours over the last few years of under-the-table deals between some local Tories and far-right candidates, but also that the person seen shaking the BNP candidate’s hand turns out to be a member of the local Asian community.

There is a second interesting story doing the rounds, in relation to the matter of whether one of the Tipton Three was seen outside a polling station in Tipton on Thursday, and if so, which of the political parties they were canvassing for - for which I’m awaiting further verification for publishing anything.

I had thought that the only real downside to Charles Clarke’s demise as Home Secretary was the loss on an amusing Google Bomb - in case you haven’t checked Chuckles runs and neck with Elmer, a Canadian cartoon elephant used to teach kids about road safety, etc., for the top spot on a search for ‘Safety Elephant’.

Now we have John Reid at the Home Office, Blair’s very own Toxic Crusader, and boy is he off to a flying start in his new job - he’s only been in post three days and he’s already tried to blame the courts for the Home Office’s fuck up over foreign criminal and now he’s claiming that Blair is:

the victim of a left wing plot to oust him as prime minister

That’s the spirit, John. You’ve only had the job three days and already you’re lying through your fucking teeth.

In case you hadn’t already worked it out, Blair has absolutely no fucking intention of resigning any time soon and if you’re wanting an ordely transition your best bet looks to be a bullet in the back of the fucker’s head - at least that’d be quick, final and well worth the price of a bottle of carpet shampoo and a bit of replacement wallpaper for No 10 - just don’t let Derry Irvine pick the fucking wallpaper if it’s going on your credit card.

There were plenty of good reasons, before this week, why Blair should go, to which we can now add the loss of more than 300 councillors, the BNP and Respect winning seats in what should be core Labour areas and a cabinet reshuffle that amounting to the little more than Blair circling the wagons and hunkering down in preparation for his last stand.

Just about Blair’s only success this week came in heaping humiliation on Geoff Hoon, who thought he’d be attending Cabinet meetings regularly only to find that he’d be attending them ‘when required’. Can anyone think of a good reason to sit in the same room - no, make that the same building - as Buff, let alone invite him to a meeting?

No, I can’t either - and neither can other members of the Cabinet it seems.

I want to make something perfectly clear - when John Reid claims:

"The whole thing has been generated by people who want to push Mr Blair out. They want to stop the reform programme and go back to Old Labour,"

He’s talking out his arse - this isn’t about ‘Old Labour’ and ‘New Labour’ - this is about the future of the Labour Party, of which there is only one - something that the Blairites seem to have forgotten having made the fatal error of starting the believe their own hype.

There are numerous individual reasons why Blair should go that all add up to one thing - we currently have a Party Leader and Prime Minister who is more concerned with his so-called ‘personal legacy’ than he is about the future of the party and our prospects of winning a fourth term. It really is as a simple as that - he’s not going to be fighting another election as leader so why should he give a fuck about the state he leaves the party in at the end of it all - it’s not like he give’s a shit about the membership anyway, hasn’t done for years.

There’s a very simple message we need to be sending to Blair right now…

…if you want to leave behind a personal legacy then do what Reagan did and build a fucking library.

The Labour Party doesn’t need a legacy, it needs a future and that something that Blair cannot offer.