Iain is being a little unfair on the blessed Ruth citing her as potentially Labour’s Most Incompetent Minister.

Firstly Mrs Balls (Yvette Cooper) deserves most of the opprobrium for the HIPs mess and there is a competitive field of choices in the ministerial incompetence stakes. Prezza has messed up more policies in his time than most. Hewitt is hardly the best of the bunch, Des Browne sends men to die for lack of equipment and lack of any comprehensible strategic or even credible tactical plan in Afghanistan.

Des Browne gets Guido’s vote, his incompetence is the most serious. It is wasting the lives of British soldiers…