Good Riddance

Gordon Brown has little to commend him, but if the prospect of his Premiership is enough to banish John Reid from public life, then Brown really cannot be all that bad. Who will be the next to jump before being pushed, announcing an intention to "retire"? The smart money is on Tessa Jowell, but there will be others. Reid's best mate in Cabinet, at whose Constituency Labour Party dinner he has given an after-dinner speech, for a start...

Which brings me to a Reid-admirer known to me, who refused to speak to old schoolmates at Thursday's count because they were now lowly tellers (their reaction to this was hilariously unprintable and unprintably hilarious...), and who is perhaps best described as Not David Lindsay, since the basis of such political success as he has ever had in this Ward and Parish has been his supposedly high profile, and supposed popularity, compared to me.

For that reason, my former party ran him as a District Council candidate instead of me four years ago; he lost them the seat. I have just been comfortably re-elected to the Parish Council, whereas he scraped back in by a hair's breadth. All in all, at a most localised level, Reid's delusion that he could have beaten Brown for Leader springs to mind.

So I can only regret that Reid had not made his announcement this time last night, when I was pinned up against an alley wall by NDL's brother-in-law-to-be, with his hands gripping my throat, while NDL's sister screamed hysterically that, among other things, I had "ruined [NDL's] career". What "career"?