The Times’ chief political correspondent, Anthony Browne is off to run the Policy Exchange think tank after only one year in post. The job interview must have been interesting, since only last month he described Policy Exchange as “very close to the Conservative leadership” and accused them of issuing a report “giving perfect cover for a hard-hitting speech on the same day by David Cameron, detailing how he would tackle the issue.” Clearly they forgave him for that sensitive jibe.

The job opening comes at a crucial time, Murdoch having basically decided to back Brown and try to crack the whip on Cameron to bring him into line. If our tele-democracy is about bread and circuses, Guido is in no doubt who is the ringmaster. So who will be the clown who gets the job?

It will be interesting to see if it goes to a journalist with known sympathies. If Tom Baldwin gets it, you can be sure the Times will be slanting reportage even more favourably to Gordon. It is one thing for the comment columnists to be partisan, if they weren’t, it’d be boring. Some days even the Times’ political reporting reads like it was written by Ed Balls.

UPDATE : This just in from Machiavelli , frankly nothing would surprise Guido…