Before the British Prime Minister, Mr Tony Blair, leaves for his borrowed chateau outside Toulouse, he must face up to a difficult and divisive task; one which his predecessors seldom approached with relish. The government reshuffle was expected at Easter and then in May. It can be put off no longer and is now expected this Thursday. There will not be wholesale changes - tantamount to an admission of inadequacy - but neither, after all the waiting, can it be a damp squib.
Mr Blair's task is not easy. He has no completely duff ministers who he can blithely strip of salary, car and prestige and not have his conscience trouble him. And yet there is a need for new blood (Mr Peter Mandelson's elevation is deemed essential) and a need to set right the Cabinet's regional imbalance. Scotland and the North-East of England provide nearly half the members of the Cabinet but supply only 15 per cent of the Labour vote. The gossip is that as many as five Cabinet members may be dropped; such a casualty rate seems unlikely but Mr Blair may be tempted to go in for wide-ranging change at the sub-Cabinet level.
There are few obvious Cabinet candidates for the chop. Mrs Thatcher had the "wets" that she wanted to weed out, Mr Major had the "bastards" that he needed to sort out; neither Prime Minister felt able to reshuffle in as brutal a fashion as they desired and eventually they both paid the price. Mr Blair, soaring in the opinion polls, has no dissidents or if he has they are keeping quiet. Like it or not, Mr Blair will have to shaft the loyal and hard-working.
None of the Cabinet casualties will come from the major offices of state such as the Exchequer, the Foreign Office and the Home Office, while the Deputy Prime Minister, Mr John Prescott, is untouchable. To nobody's surprise, the bad news will come instead to lower-profile members such as Dr David Clarke and Mr Gavin Strang. Where it might get interesting is if Mr Blair decides to drop or switch the likes of Ms Margaret Beckett, Mr George Robertson or Ms Harriet Harman. Ms Harman has not made a great success of her Social Security brief and she is a poor parliamentary performer but she cannot be dropped altogether because she is a loyal protege of the Chancellor, Mr Gordon Brown. Mr Blair needs to balance his Cabinet, not as between left and right because the left has been emasculated, but between Blairites and Brownites. Ms Harman stood by Mr Brown over the lone parent cuts; Mr Brown will stand by her now.
Interest in Ireland will centre on Dr Mo Mowlam. Undoubtedly she has earned promotion but both she and her leader may feel that her work in Stormont is not yet fully finished. The talk is that she may be asked to chair the party, a switch which would certainly move her up the Cabinet pecking order. Two things are certain. One is that she would welcome promotion and the second is that she will not want to stay in Belfast much longer. When the Executive is, in large measure, running Northern Ireland the Secretary of State will become much less relevant; a fact not lost on Mr Donald Dewar who has opted to leave the Cabinet for the job as Scotland's First Minister. Perhaps, then, just one more year of Dr Mowlam's invaluable presence in Northern Ireland.