Prime minister
Peter Mandelson
post meridian
post mortem
Political commentators have gone down a notch in my estimation following their failure to forecast, & dumbfounded reaction to, the return of (now Lord) Peter to the cabinet
It was, I think, a diary piece from the Labour conference, about the all hands to the wheel on the deck of the mill antics of Campbell, Prescott et al, which added parenthetically that even Mandelson was now regularly consulted by phone from Number 10
Odd, I thought, especially as no comment or explanation was offered
But when I heard the news of the reshuffle I just thought: Oh! That is what it was all about
There was clearly plenty of briefing going on; Philip Webster, for example, had an otherwise very accurate forecast on Friday morning. How will he & other distinguished journalists react to this kind of GOTCHA!?
Gordon Brown has a disturbing taste for springing this kind of surprise – after all he started his career in government with one such in the bestowal of independence on the Bank of England
But is it clever?
