There could be utter chaos on Friday

In Westminster, the word is that Gordon Brown will reshuffle the Cabinet on Friday as the local election results come in. The thinking is that this will distract attention from the results, allow Labour to claim that the European election results on Sunday are a verdict on the past Cabinet not this one and, most crucially, to make it harder for any plot to get off the ground.

The plan is that Ministers will have been offered new jobs before they know if the plot is on or not and that their self-preservation instinct will lead them to say yes, binding them to Brown. But in practise, there is a chance that this could backfire. Whenever word gets out that a reshuffle is underway, the rumour mill goes into overdrive—no speculation it too outrageous or too thinly sourced to make the rounds. So there’s a danger that Ministers could think, wrongly, that they’re going to be dropped or demoted and decide to get their retaliation in first.