The cabinet musical chairs game has plainly got out of hand. At the last count, five ministers had declared they would not be moved. If you discount the so-caIled great offices of state, where no change is expected, virtually half the cabinet has ruled itself out of Tony Blair's reconstruction.

Perhaps this is the first people's reshuffle, where you do it yourself. Their forwardness is against the rules, however, and will be punished by Alastair Campbell, who has been talking up the prospects of a return of the disgraced former trade secretary, Peter Mandelson. He will tell the Prime Minister that he must show who is the boss, which, in turn, means more blood sacrifices.

I do hope my friend "Steve" Byers, the populist successor to Mandelson, is not one of the victims. He sent a note round to Labour MPs with the weekly whip, saying that he was available for joint photographs. This practice is normally reserved for more senior members of the government.

Meanwhile, Mo Mowlam is telling friends that she is sick and tired of No 10 briefing against her and is quite prepared to quit politics altogether if Blair moves her from Northern IreIand.

Jolly entertaining that the Liberal Democrats look like becoming victims of their obsession with vote-fixing, which they call proportional representation. Charles Kennedy is ahead in the ambulation to succeed "Bomber" Ashdown, but not by enough. His campaign crew believes he has only 40 per cent of the votes, which will require another ballot using second- and further-preference votes.

That procedure, it is expected, will eliminate David Rendel, then Malcolm Bruce and then Jackie Ballard. The gloomy prognostication is that too many of their transferred votes will go to the runner-up, Simon Hughes, for comfort. It probably won't, but it could all go badly wrong, simply because the Lib Dems don't know how to use the voting system that they want to inflict on the rest of us.

However, this panic may explain the anonymous denunciation of Hughes in my post, dragging up his remarks about "illegal immigrants" in 1994 and, last year, about the "huge influx" of West Africans into Southwark. Hughes is certainly not a racist himself, but, as one of his constituents, I can testify to the lumpen nature of much of his support.

The vendetta against Michael Ashcroft, treasurer of the Tory party, is mystifying. No wonder he decided to sue the Times: the Murdoch paper has been hell-bent on hounding him. MPs and apparatchiks cannot work out what is going on. Is the editor, Peter Stothard, the latest convert to scalp-hunting journalism? Or has Ashcroft crossed Rupert Murdoch in some minor but fatal way? Conservative MPs insist that William Hague is hanging on to nurse for fear of delivering the treasurership to Jeffrey Archer.

The biggest revolt by backbenchers on the government side has gone virtually unnoticed. On 14 July, Labour MPs made up most of the 102 members voting against the City of London (Ward Elections) Bill, which extends the present narrow business franchise of the corporation that runs the Square Mile. It was quite an ill-tempered debate. Michael Connarty MP, Falkirk East, accused the deputy speaker, Sir Alan Haselhurst, of interrupting (that's what he's there for) and had to apologise for his "disgraceful comment". Andrew Mackinlay, Thurrock, was ordered not to interrupt while sitting down. Ivan Henderson, Harwich, was told to switch off his "electrical device", which went off while the minister for London, Nick Raynsford, was speaking.

MPs spent four-and-a-half hours on the bill, which only affects a few thousand people.

Yet the government says - on the eve of an 83-day summer break - that it cannot find parliamentary time for legislation to ban hunting with dogs.

The writer is chief political commentator for the "Mirror"
Lynton Charles returns next month