Well, really!

No Brown ID?

Jack Straw, 'campaign' manager for the man who would be king, is apparently in line to be Home Secretary (again) when Reid steps down as Blair's NuLab project finally collapses on 27 June. According to the Guardian, Jack has hinted that the ID card fiasco might be reviewed under a Brown premiership.

While the former home secretary has been supportive in public, leaked papers have made clear that he repeatedly opposed the idea in cabinet... "I will continue to urge strongly that this issue be shelved," he told his cabinet colleagues on September 24 that year [2003].

The estimated cost of the scheme is now around £6 billion, although the £510m cost of registering Britons living abroad has been offloaded to the Foreign Office budget to keep the official estimate looking better. But Gordon's eye for numbers would surely be attracted by "six billions", as he likes to say it, if he could say he was moving some of it to the NHS.

Wot Bad News?

Today is a good day for burying things. No, not careers and reputations, but Bad News (© Jo Moore).

First, interest rates continue their upward spiral as the Bank raises the base rate to 5.5%, its highest level since 2001. [OK, it wasn't the MPC's decision that Blair should do his nauseating "what a great 10 years it's been" thing today]. But the pundits seem to be saying: "Don't worry, energy prices are falling [but not at the petrol pumps, in my experience], so the rates will soon come down again". The pundits I listened to 8-10 years ago used to say that a rate change takes 18 months to filter through to the inflation figures. Go figure.

Then, the Home Office has announced that the official cost of the disastrous ID card scheme has risen £400 million to £5.31bn since the last estimate. The Tories and Lib Dems claimed that the Home Office broke the law by releasing the updated figures a month later than they should... Liberal Democrat home affairs spokesman Nick Clegg said: "It is bad enough that the government seeks to bury bad news behind the camouflage of Tony Blair's announcement. Breaking the law to do so breaks new ground even for Tony Blair's Labour Party."

The good news is that the removal vans have been booked for 27 June. The day before my Dad's birthday. If only he was still around to enjoy the moment...

Today's the Day!

Today's the day we've all been waiting for. Two weeks ago, the Telegraph predicted that Blair would announce his resignation on 1 May, the tenth anniversary of his election as PM, and – crucially – the eve of the local elections. An attempt, typically, to limit Labour's expected electoral damage. "Even Mr Blair's most loyal supporters concede his unpopularity is so deep that his resignation could actually improve the party's showing".

He didn't. But the Telegraph's source was half right, because on 1 May the man announced his intention to announce the 'timetable for his departure'. On the GMTV sofa – where else? – he said: "I'll make my position clear next week, I'll say something definitive then."

As Nick Robinson says today, "It is now a staggering 952 days since a weakened Tony Blair first declared that he would not seek to go 'on and on and on'."

Now, at last, he has told the Cabinet when he will go. He stays, allegedly, for seven weeks until a new Labour leader is chosen. Brown praised Mr Blair's "unique achievement over 10 years and the unique leadership he had given to the party, Britain and the world"... His comments were greeted by "much thumping of tables" by Mr Blair's colleagues. Whether in agreement or anger we are not told.

The public announcement will be in Sedgefield at midday.

UPDATE: Over at Blairwatch, ringverse points out that 27 June is exactly 1000 days from the moment – on 30 September 2004 – that Blair announced his intention to step down.

9 Jobs in 10 Years Too Many for Reid

In most CVs, nine jobs in ten years would have alarm bells ringing. Incompetent, can't handle the pressure, upsets the team, too interested in his own career to stay the course? Whatever the reason, John Reid has now announced he will resign as Home Secretary "when Tony goes". This just weeks after deciding that the department he called "not fit for purpose" should be split in two.

Ian Dale writes about rats and sinking ships. And a commenter mentions a report that a group resignation of Blairites should be expected, timed to coincide with Blair's departure. Perhaps he just jumped before he was pushed. Whatever, it means one less Scot in Brown's (one assumes it will be him) cabinet pool – I for one can never decode Reid's heavy Glasgow accent.