Knock Knock
Who's There?
Hazel
Hazel Who?
That's politics
They say a week is a long time in politics. In the modern media age, I think we can reduce that to an hour. Hazel Blears resigned on Wednesday, but less than three days later she is already the forgotten woman of British politics. I had thought she might play the Geoffrey Howe role, but if she made a resignation statement on Monday she would be saying nothing that hadn't been said by others over the last 24 hours. In truth, the glut of Cabinet departures today has almost devalued the word 'resignation'.
If I had said to you on the blog at 9am today that four more cabinet ministers (or is it 5 - I am punch drunk) would have resigned by the end of the day, together with several Ministers of State, and then I said to you that the Prime Minister was still in his job, you'd have thought I'd have finally cracked. If I then told you that not only that, but that he had held a press conference in which he had lied about his intentions towards his chancellor, had convinced himself that his reshuffle was a perfect example of its kind and that all he really needed to do was get on with the job, you'd have been on to the Priory and asking Susan Boyle to swap beds with me.
But that's the situation we are in. And it's the very uncomfortable situation Labour MPs find themselves in. As I write this in the BBC newsroom at Millbank I can hear lots of chatter about the likelihood of enough Labour backbenchers calling on Brown to go to force a contest. Somehow, I have my doubts.
