The next election campaign starts now

There has never been such a dramatic political decline. Three months ago, Tony Blair was full of plans for his third term. Now, he is a corpse waiting for a coffin. Three months ago, the Blairites were blithely dismissive of Gordon Brown. Now, they are frantically sucking up to him.

The PM may have been re-elected, but he has lost all moral authority. The voters are no longer listening; his party is no longer listening. We no longer have a Prime Minister; we merely have Hugh Grant’s understudy. Mr Blair has also lost his political touch. Though he was never good at reshuffles, this one was the botch of botches. There was one positive feature. It reaffirmed the government’s commitment to recycling rubbish. But Mr Blair even managed to sack Paul Murphy, one of his few successful Cabinet ministers, replacing him in Ulster with Peter Hain. It is impossible to conceive of a worse appointment.