BRITAIN: John Reid has turned an unwelcome spotlight on the chief contenders for No 10, writes Frank Millar, London Editor
British home secretary John Reid may proceed with his delayed holiday plans content that Britain's official threat assessment has been reduced and that the sense at least of immediate danger has passed.
That will have been among the more reassuring Downing Street despatches to Cliff Richard's holiday home in Barbados where prime minister Tony Blair must now contemplate his own return home.
Indeed, by the time he and wife Cherie board their scheduled flight the situation at Heathrow airport may have returned to normal.
This would certainly ease any lingering embarrassment about Mr Blair's decision to stay in the Caribbean while thousands of his fellow-citizens had their holidays disrupted or ruined during the national security crisis prompted by the alleged plot to target UK flights to the United States with liquid bombs.
It might be somewhat discomfiting for Mr Blair that there was, in fact, no real national outcry demanding that he return home and be seen to take command.
However, he will be reassured that most people seem to accept that even prime ministers are entitled to time away with their family. In the world of modern communications, moreover, they also know that the prime minister can remain pretty much in charge whatever his location, and regardless of whichever minister is left nominally minding the shop.
And, of course, Dr Reid (as he likes to be known) did much more than confirm himself again as the cabinet's safest pair of hands. The home secretary's assured performance, whether chairing meetings of the cabinet's emergency Cobra committee or performing before the television cameras, also dispelled the real anxieties many would have felt at the suggestion that deputy prime minister John Prescott really was running the country in Mr Blair's absence.
Presumably it was the perception that he had been elbowed aside that prompted the reportedly incandescent Prezza to summon the cameras for his very own prime ministerial-like statement (with no questions) last Friday.
Unfortunately for the troubled deputy prime minister this only reinforced the belief among his media tormentors that Mr Prescott is no longer really at the heart of things inside the Blair government. The dismissive American response to reports that he had described President Bush as "crap" in his approach to the Middle East peace process likewise attested to his much reduced status.
Observing that the president has been called a lot worse, White House spokesman Tony Snow added pointedly: "The president talks regularly with prime minister Blair, who is the prime minister." Notwithstanding denials that the leak of his private remarks was deliberate, the journalist who broke the story (who is also his biographer) reckons it will have greatly enhanced Mr Prescott's standing among Labour MPs troubled by Mr Blair's refusal to condemn Israel and distance himself from America in the Lebanon crisis.
Inside Number 10 that will only reinforce the view that the deputy who presumably cannot be sacked without prompting demands for an early leadership contest is no longer a dependable ally.
The only serious criticism of Mr Reid (and most of that from journalists) is that if anything he appears to have enjoyed his recent Churchillian role rather too much. Contrasts have been drawn with Charles Clarke's altogether less public performance following last year's London bombings in which people actually died. There was apparently some resistance inside Scotland Yard to participation in Mr Reid's overtly political press conference when the airline security crisis first broke.
For Mr Reid himself, however, there will be no obvious downside in seeing the bookmakers cut the odds on him eventually succeeding Mr Blair.
It seems unlikely that the events of the past 10 days will impact upon Gordon Brown's expected succession. However, the home secretary's lead role has turned an unwelcome spotlight on the two men who most expect to eventually make it to Number 10.
Conservative leader David Cameron got the politics of the situation badly wrong with his attack on the government's security record, while Chancellor Brown, still on paternity leave, again stayed silent.
On the evidence available so far, the British people can know little about how either man would perform in a crisis, or what adjustments if any they might make in Britain's foreign policy. Certainly neither is yet behaving like a convincing alternative prime-minister-in-waiting.