As regular readers may know, the idea that John Reid could be the next PM scares me silly. The ex-communist bully boy he has a reputation for competence which seems to be based solely on the fact that he can string sentences together in a semi-coherent fashion. This, admittedly, is something that not all members of the government are capable of but it's hardly a good indicator of wider competence in running a government deperatment, never mind the whole country.

So it is fortunate, in a way, that the Doctor's efforts at the Home Office are revealing the depths of his "competence" for all of us to see.

And here's a wee reminder of Reid's not so distant past.

Reid is not without serious blemish. A few months before his Ulster posting [2000/01], he was the first senior cabinet member ever to be severely censured by the parliamentary commissioner for standards, Elizabeth Filkin. It was a tangled affair, but in essence he was accused of using parliamentary allowances, taxpayer's cash, to pay the salaries of staff, again including his son, in his constituency office, knowing that they were really working for Labour's electoral campaign. In the course of the inquiry, it emerged that Reid had held "discussions" with other witnesses, which in plain unparliamentary language sounded a lot like threats. Conveniently for Reid, Filkin's censure was overturned by a Labour-dominated House of Commons committee. It was a political fix that undermined her office, and diminished the notion of independent parliamentary scrutiny of MPs' conduct.

Reid is the personification of everything that is wrong with New Labour.