Britain: The prime minister responded to Labour's crisis with a spectacular reshuffle, writes Frank Millar, London Editor.
Tony Blair's purpose was clear yesterday - to show himself resolute in command and determined to go on.
Even as voters digested the breakfast-time headlines proclaiming a fresh Labour crisis prompted by an overnight thumping in the English local elections, Mr Blair was crafting alternatives for the lunchtime bulletins with his most radical cabinet reshuffle since coming to power nine - now, seemingly, very long - years ago.
Something of a political earthquake had just hit London, with its reverberations felt in places as far afield as Warrington, while mercifully bypassing traditional safety zones such as Liverpool, Manchester and Newcastle. On his first outing David Cameron had secured his leadership, defying the pundits' predictions of net Tory losses, and, crucially, taking the 40 per cent share of the vote that brings the first glimmer of a genuine Conservative revival. But the prime minister had plainly resolved to waste no time on inquests, as some 300 former Labour councillors carried home the bitter taste of defeat, leaving marginal MPs to contemplate seriously depleted constituency resources and still more vulnerable parliamentary majorities.
Doubtless mindful of past botched jobs, and stung by suggestions that he is a poor butcher, Mr Blair wielded the knife this time in spectacular fashion. In the end, however, the surprise was that this should have been a surprise at all.
It very much remains to be seen if this recasting manages to refresh and re-energise Mr Blair's third-term administration. However, the certainty was that any reshuffle which left all the principal offices of state untouched would have registered little with many beyond the Westminster village. The appointment of David Miliband, already tipped as a future leader, is an interesting counter to David Cameron's insistence that "Blue is the new green". But outside the Labour Party (and even across great swathes within it), does anybody really care that Hazel Blears has replaced the equally diminutive Ian McCartney as party chairman? The talented Alan Johnson's replacement of the troubled Ruth Kelly at education makes sense. Yet like Douglas Alexander's move to transport and dour Alistair Darling's transfer to trade, such moves were hardly going to set the country alight.
So Mr Blair began at the top, leaving deputy prime minister John Prescott with his title but little else in the way of departmental power, while doing what he had to do in sacking Charles Clarke from the Home Office. Before, during and since the Iraq war there have been flashes of Downing Street anger at occasional, seemingly less-than-loyal comments from Jack Straw. Yet Mr Straw was surprised to find himself replaced by Margaret Beckett and demoted to leader of the Commons before deciding, after a bit of soul searching, not to emulate Mr Clarke and return to the backbenches.
Mr Clarke again hotly denied suggestions (put about by some fellow Blairites, incidentally) that he had never actually offered his resignation over the foreign prisoner release fiasco, and that Mr Blair had been angered by misrepresentations of this position.
Whatever the truth of that, Mr Clarke finally put himself in the right position yesterday, declining alternative ministerial posts, having, as he said, staked his reputation on putting the Home Office mess to rights.
That task, predictably enough, now falls to John Reid, the prime minister's firefighter-in-chief, now in his seventh cabinet post, whose no-nonsense approach might just produce results from a dysfunctional department Mr Blair seems loathe to reduce and restructure.
Mr Clarke was gracious about his successor, even as he explained his disagreement with Mr Blair's judgment that current levels of public concern meant he was no longer the man to see through the necessary reforms.
Plainly bruised and hurt, Mr Clarke acknowledged he was leaving with deep regret. Even so, he made clear he would not be adding to the disaffection on the Labour backbenches.
Instead the departing minister declared undying allegiance to the leader who had sacrificed him, his resignation statement to the cameras containing a sting-in-the-tail for Gordon Brown which laid bare the nature of the new Blair project, and exposed the personal fault-line at the heart of government which could yet prove its undoing.
Declaring it would not be appropriate for him to remain in government, Mr Clarke vowed he would continue to be a strong and active supporter of Mr Blair "for his full parliamentary term". That was not the message supporters of Chancellor Brown wanted to hear. Yet it chimed with the perception of rebel MPs such as John McDonnell, who saw yesterday's reshuffle as a "circling of the wagons" around Mr Blair, and the guarantee of renewed internal debate and "more skirmishes" to come with the man who would succeed him.
The press will continue to have a field day. However, the questions tormenting Labour MPs are not the stuff of media fiction. And they will not go away.