Βι¶ΉΤΌΕΔ

Back in 2003, Tony Blair provided a masterclass in how not to conduct a reshuffle. He wanted to beef up the government's crime fighting apparatus - and that meant abolishing the ancient post of Lord Chancellor, creating a new to run the courts and prisons, and refocusing the Βι¶ΉΤΌΕΔ Office on crime and immigration issues.

But it all went horribly wrong, with the plans dissolving into a terrible mess - among the minor consequences is that, to this day, Justice Secretary Jack Straw rejoices in the title Lord Chancellor and has to wear the full 17th Century ceremonial robes on state occasions.

More importantly we have a Lord Speaker presiding over the upper House, and a Lord Chief Justice heading the judiciary. But one of the casualties was Mr Blair's old mentor Lord Irvine, the then Lord Chancellor, who fulfilled all these roles as well as sitting in Cabinet. He left the woolsack in what was universally assumed to be high dudgeon. Both men have now given to the Lords Constitution Committee - and there's an entertaining dose of passive aggression in their evidence.

Lord Irvine began his evidence (which was published by the Committee last October) by saying that he chose to keep his silence at the time, rather than embarrass the government, but has now decided that the time has come to put the record straight. Straight because he flatly contradicts the evidence of the then Cabinet Secretary Lord Turnbull who said Lord Irvine had been consulted, and that the real problem was that he disagreed.

Lord Irvine says he only discovered the plan to abolish his office (which some claim predates the Norman conquest) when reports appeared in the Times and Telegraph.

He described his astonishment that far-reaching changes to his empire were being pursued without consulting him, and detailed some rather frosty meetings with his old pupil Mr Blair, in which he said he had been badly advised and was botching the process of reorganisation. And in which he offered to carry out the reforms the prime minister wanted, and then go.

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He says the Lord Chancellor and his department could not be told that their abolition was being considered until the decision was finalised. He was "by no means oblivious" of the scale of the changes he proposed, and he wanted to take the central decisions first and sort out the implications "in an orderly way". And he decided it would be wrong to let Lord Irvine oversee changes he didn't really believe in - or as Mr Blair put it, was "unsympathetic to".

He added that Lord Irvine was a "great public servant" and "as significant as any Lord Chancellor in modern history". But somehow I don't think they've quite kissed and made up. And, sadly, Mr Blair won't be appearing before the committee to give a first hand account of events.

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