GORDON brown reasserted his authority today with what his supporters insisted was a stupid, pointless reshuffle that won't make the slightest difference to anything.
In a series of decisive moves Mr Brown kept most of his senior ministers in the same jobs after ruthlessly agreeing not to upset anyone in case they went on television and said he was rubbish.
According to Labour sources Mr Brown last night decisively abandoned a plan to make Ed Balls the chancellor amid fears that Alistair Darling was about to become the most tedious man to topple a prime minister since Geoffrey Howe.
Meanwhile Jack Straw will remain as justice secretary because Downing Street forgot about him and Peter Mandelson will stay as business secretary because that's where all the best yacht action is.
David Miliband remains as foreign secretary for diabolical reasons known only to Tony Blair, while Amstrad boss Sir Alan Sugar becomes an 'enterprise czar' as part of Mr Brown's plan to restore Britain's reputation as the global centre for shitty, useless hi-fis that sound like they are underwater.
And in what Labour sources described as 'one final act of utter bastardry', Mr Brown handed the Home Office to leadership favourite Alan Johnson in a bid to destroy his reputation as a safe pair of hands by Monday morning at the latest.
A Downing Street spokesman said: "We've decided to leave the post of work and pensions secretary vacant, mainly because there's no work and no pensions."
He added: "It's a fresh, exciting team of pretty much the same discredited people doing the same appalingly incompetent things. It can't possibly fail."
