Update note: It’s entirely possible that there should be a question-mark in the headline to this post. He’s not stupid enough to have made this move without thinking it through, but I can’t for the life of me work out what he’s got planned.

Update 2: This post is now largely obsolete, and so has been edited down – Jack Straw is indeed Lord Chancellor. Had a bit of a scare there though – and it’s still very confusing…

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Via email and the like, I’ve been having heated discussions with a couple of mates about precisely what’s happened to the office of Lord Chancellor in this reshuffle. It looks rather like Brown may have made a major cock-up, and the current TV coverage hasn’t mentioned it a jot.

[Update edit – removed paragraph]

There is, technically, no constitutional reason why Jack Straw couldn’t be Lord Chancellor while remaining in the Commons, from what I can tell. But it’d be very, very odd indeed and I can’t see any way it would work in practice. [Update edit – removed speculation]

What the hell is going on? [Update edit – removed sentence]

They’re now announcing a special Cabinet session to change the constitution – but how, exactly, and where does the Cabinet get the authority to do that?