I'm always a little concerned when people come up to me, as they have done this past fortnight, and say that "this lot must be giving you so much material at the moment". This usually means that the government, dissatisfied with the amount of ridicule it is attracting from outside, has decided to write its own script, which is invariably more ludicrous than any comic invention. It would have taken a particularly imaginative satirist to come up with John Prescott's affair, but to combine it with news of the release of a thousand foreign criminals on to the streets (the very week that Blair was boasting how he would "harry, hassle and hound them until they leave the country") and Patricia Hewitt's mauling at the hands of the nurses was some feat by anybody's standards.
I have never met Charles Clarke, but I have encountered the other two, Hewitt at a Health Service Awards do, where she relieved the boredom by texting away on her mobile phone, and Prescott on a number of occasions on Breakfast With Frost. At the last such encounter, he cheerfully greeted that day's newspaper reviewer, Nigel Havers, before noticing me, whereupon his face fell so far and so fast that Havers and I burst out laughing. "He's just working on your script," Havers joked. "I don't give a crap what he says," spat the Deputy Prime Minister, and stormed off so grumpily he nearly took the door with him.
Not that I should feel in any way flattered by this. As he's chosen to hold on to his salary and his two grace-and-favour homes - well, he needs somewhere to conduct his affairs - it's clear that he doesn't give a crap what anybody says. This is a man who thinks a reshuffle is something to do with pocket billiards. The Prime Minister must have been debating whether to give him a new job or an Asbo.
"Don't forget," Prescott growled as we parted, "I have the last word." Not any more he doesn't.
The local election results were quickly obscured by the drama of the reshuffle, as we can be sure the Prime Minister intended. But the whole business of hiring and firing ministers is wasted on Sky News in the middle of the morning. It should be done live on prime time, hosted by Ant and Dec: "Ho-ho! So, who's going to be leaving the jungle?" (Pause. The camera pans round an expectant cabinet.) "John Reid," (longer pause), "it's not you." (Reid sighs with relief.) "Jack Straw," (even longer pause, tight close-up on Straw's face), "it might be you."
Though not his greatest fan, I'm at a loss to understand why Straw got the bullet. By all accounts, he is, too. Perhaps Blair was jealous of Jack's relationship with Condi Rice. All that bed-sharing. Romantic trips to Baghdad and Blackburn. After the revelations about Prescott, the prospect of the Foreign Secretary and his US counterpart lying in the Jacuzzi at Chevening singing "Ebony and Ivory" was too much to bear.
Charles Clarke clearly feels aggrieved about his sacking. All the more so since the Home Office was about to launch a scheme under which individuals at most risk of reoffending would be tagged and have their every movement monitored. Pauline Prescott had even volunteered her husband for the trials.
The irony about all the speculation concerning Blair's timetable for stepping down is that he started it himself by announcing that he would not seek re-election. He may have reformed many laws, but that of unintended consequences isn't one of them. Attempts to appease the public and control the agenda have a habit of backfiring. I'm reminded of the decision taken back in 1969 that a fly-on-the-wall television documentary about the royal family would satisfy the public's curiosity and be A Good Thing. In the event, it opened Pandora's Box.
As journalists indulge in a feeding frenzy on briefings from Blairites and Brownites, the Prime Minister complains that all this talk about the succession is a distraction from the real issues. Given the real issues at the Home Office, in the health service and in education (where class sizes have been rising again), he should welcome any distractions he can get.
For my own part, I think the experience of his third term, considered together with that of Margaret Thatcher before him, is the best possible argument for a two-term limit for prime ministers.
