"I'm leaving office to spend more time on my sunbed"

Not very often I'll pass on my hearty congratulations to the Parliamentary Labour Party, but they have made two very astute choices tonight giving Shaun Woodward and Mr Tango-Man the heave-ho from their front bench.

Woodward, even before his nondescript sojourn as SoS for Northern Ireland, always had struck me as one of the worst examples of the modern-day careerist politician, the type who wouldn't know what a principle (political or otherwise) was even if it were to hit him over the head with a baseball bat. The ultimate loyal apparatchik who was nevertheless capable of shamelessly flitting between parties without so much of a whiff of an explanation or apology. His waffling attempted justification, last weekend on Radio Ulster, for denying NI voters the right to have a Labour candidate on the ballot paper was exactly what I would have expected from the gutless weasel.

Which leads us seamlessly onto... Peter Hain.
Other than the man himself, I can't imagine there is anyone sad to see him wander off into political obscurity.