Nutts to (Gordon) Brown

Until the birth of New Labour it was comparatively rare for a British politician to be assassinated. These days, the only job more perilous is being a member of the Columbian judiciary.

Consider Alan Johnson, once considered the brightest and best in the Labour ranks.

This, of course, is like being considered the most liberal member of the B.N.P. or most charismatic member of the Liberal Democrats. Nevertheless - however shallow the compliment - it was enough to push Johnson way out in front in the race to lead his party through its rapidly-approaching eight years of impotence and opposition.

Having taken the Brownian shilling however, Johnson now finds himself with a portfolio that can best be described as Minister for Shitty Jobs. Now that the traditional poison chalice set to the lips of tall poppies of yore - Minister for Northern Ireland - has been leeched of its venom, prime ministers have to be more creative in sticking it to the junior ranks.

The bad news started for Johnson when he was (literally) pushed to the front in the Afghan War, becoming the first Home Secretary to be honoured with a paddleless visit up that particular creek. Presumably Bob Ainsworth - a Defence secretary who has unwittingly become the most persuasive apologist for every standpoint that he opposes - is now so unwelcome that even close members of his family shy him with date-expired vegetables when he arrives home.

Thus it is that Johnson found himself arguing in defiance of all physiological instinct to blush that he regarded Britain's continued support for C.I.A. operative Ahmed Wali Karzai and his vote-rigging brother as a key element in the war against domestic terrorism.

This is a bit like sending the Minister for Transport out to Afghanistan on the basis that reducing military traffic on British roads is a key element in our motorway policy.

Anyway, no sooner was Johnson done with hitching his wagon to that particular lost cause than Mrs. Brown's little boy peered out from his customary place of hiding with another job that he needed doing. Inclining an ear to the mahogany drawer from which the Prime Minister's glowered up at him, Johnson must have been surprised to hear that he was being asked to write a letter sacking David Nutt.

It is not recorded whether he had the courage to ask "Who?" but Nutt's name had certainly not been tripping off the tongue until Brown decided that it was important to (send a flunky to) sack him.

Thus it was that Johnson found himself appending his John Hancock to a letter motivated by no higher purpose than Gordon's spite and vindictiveness. Go back a few centuries and Johnson would have been hiding his weapons under a sycamore tree and demanding that Thomas Beckett submit to the King's will.

Yet we weep not for Johnson, for this is a man who - contrary to all hopes that other might have placed in him - decided that the percentage play was neither to join the rats leaving the sinking ship nor wrest the wheel from the captain who had driven it aground in the first place. Instead, he chose the honour of serenading on first violin those running up and down the deck attempting to save their birdbaths and toilet seats from the rising waters.

In contravention of the elegantly-phrased Miltonian epigram, he is the first man in history to think it was actually better to serve in Hell than rule in Heaven.