The workhouse is not coming back just yet, but what larks at Cabinet this morning as Jeremy Hunt gave out copies of Dickens’ classics to each Secretary of State.

The choices were apparently based on their character:

• David Cameron – Great Expectations & Hard Times
• Nick Clegg – Oliver Twist
• William Hague – The Uncommercial Traveller
• Andrew Mitchell – Dombey and Son
• George Osborne – A Tale of Two Cities
• Danny Alexander – Hard Times
• Kenneth Clarke – Little Dorrit
• Theresa May – Little Dorrit
• Justine Greening – Dombey and Son
• Philip Hammond – Dombey and Son
• Vince Cable – A Christmas Carol
• David Willetts – The Haunted Man and Ghost’s Bargain
• Iain Duncan Smith – Oliver Twist
• Ed Davey – Little Dorrit
• Andrew Lansley – Nicholas Nickleby
• Michael Gove – A Child’s History of England
• Eric Pickles – A House to Let
• Caroline Spelman – Bleak House
• Owen Paterson – Pickwick Papers
• Michael Moore – Pickwick Papers
• Cheryl Gillan – Pickwick Papers
• Baroness Warsi – The Old Curiosity Shop
• Francis Maude – The Old Curiosity Shop
• Oliver Letwin – The Old Curiosity Shop
• Lord Strathclyde – Bleak House
• Sir George Young – Bleak House

Lansley left early and paused for the cameras. He was backed by the Prime Ministers spokesman too. It hardly seems like Hard Times are ahead, despite this morning’s excitement. 

What are your suggestions for what Huhne would have been given? Guido would have recommended Dickens’ 1862 short story “Somebody’s Luggage”…