It can’t have escaped your attention that, yesterday, John Reid seemed to be doing the job of the Prime Minister. In Tony’s absence, Dr Reid took his position chairing COBRA. Whilst the good people of the USA were addressed by their President, our glorious leader was tanning himself on holiday, so we were addressed by Dr Reid. In fact, Mr Prescott didn’t really do any of the duties of the Prime Minister in his absence – so why his title is Deputy Prime Minister, and quite what his day-to-day job is supposed to be, I’m not sure.

Guido appears to have discovered that the reason Mr Prescott wasn’t available to lead the country through a national crisis is that he was responding to an article called ‘Prescott really is in the hotseat’ from Wednesday’s Daily Express. Fantastic leadership.

In other news, would it be cynical to suggest that the airlines would quite like the cabin baggage restrictions to continue? Suddenly, they’ve got a whole new revenue stream, as they can realistically offer novels and newspapers at highly inflated prices, reasoning that people will buy them on board if not allowed to take them on board. Furthermore, the advertising rates in their in-flight magazines can shoot up, because they suddenly have a captive audience that largely ignored their offerings forty-eight hours ago. And without big, bulky bags, boarding becomes much quicker, and hence turn-around shorter. In the longer-term, the overhead lockers could be done away with, saving a huge amount of weight, and cutting fuel prices too. This could be highly, highly profitable for airlines… even if it does scupper Ryanair’s latest plan to offer mobile phone calls on-board. I imagine the newly-created market would be more profitable than that one anyway.