THANK GOODNESS they’ve swapped Tony McNulty and Liam Byrne. That’s what they’re saying in the street. That Byrne, he’ll get those hundreds of foreign criminals under lock and key again, and out the country. He’ll count the number of illegal immigrants, scrounging bastards. He’ll sort out the cops — oh no, that’s the other guy’s job now, McNulty.

It’s a bit much to blame Mr McNulty for all the problems at the Immigration and Nationality Directorate, having been the minister responsible for it for just a year. And if John Reid, the Home Secretary who switched his ministers around this week, thinks that Mr McNulty was useless there, what does that say about the importance of policing, security and community safety, Mr McNulty’s new responsibilities? Anyone feel safe now? Yet the mini-shuffle could hardly be more important in one respect: it signifies the complete lack of strategy or vision at the top of the Government and their replacement by gimmicks.

Since the local elections (and, I know, many would say, before them, too) there has been nothing but gimmickry from No 10. First came the silly promise to repeal or rewrite or whatever the Human Rights Act, derided as unrealistic by anyone who knows anything at all about it, and denied in public by senior Cabinet ministers, including the Lord Chancellor. Then there was a “public services reform seminar” in Westminster, launching a programme of events called “Let’s Talk”, apparently to establish the territory for the next Labour manifesto. Or perhaps it was a talk, launching a programme of public services reform reflecting the territory of the last Labour manifesto.

Because what’s the difference? Hold a seminar? Sign a petition in support of animal testing? Fly into Iraq for half a day? What stunt can we pull today? At Prime Minister’s Questions Tony Blair has been quite crazy. I am a latecomer to the “Blair is mad” theory, but I am beginning to see what it’s all about. Look at this from last week:

David Cameron (paraphrased): Will automatic deportation of foreign nationals apply to those “convicted of an imprisonable offence”, as the Prime Minister said two weeks ago; actually imprisoned, as he said last week; or serving a “significant” jail term, as the Home Secretary said? Which is it? Read the Prime Minister’s reply slowly: “It is exactly as I explained when I first answered the Right Hon Gentleman. It applies only to people who have gone to prison, which is why we are talking about foreign prisoners.

“If, for example, someone is sent to prison for a very short space of time and they have been in this country for a long period of time, then the presumption of automatic deportation would not apply, but in the vast bulk of cases, as has been explained, there will be an automatic presumption to deport, and the vast bulk of those people will, indeed, be deported . . .”

The Prime Minister, Mr Cameron rightly commented, “is making it up as he goes along”. What happened to the review he announced three years ago of the Human Rights Act?

Mr Blair: “It was precisely because we believed it important to rebalance the system that we introduced, for example, the Proceeds of Crime Act 2002, which allowed us to take money off those suspected of being involved in drug dealing. It was for precisely that reason that we introduced the antisocial behaviour legislation. And it was for precisely that reason that we introduced the Criminal Justice Act 2003, which allowed us to impose mandatory minimum sentences on people carrying illegal firearms . . .”

What is he on about? Those have nothing whatever to do with the Human Rights Act. The Prime Minister sounds barking mad.

Now see the bossy letters he is writing to his new Cabinet and publishing on the No 10 website. Did Mr Reid really need to be told that he should “make additional progress” in dealing with asylum-seekers and illegal immigrants, or that the police “should radically improve their performance”? Did David Miliband need to be told that he must “respond robustly” to any threat of bird flu? And what does it say of the Prime Minister’s confidence in the communication skills of his Health Secretary that he effectively ordered Patricia Hewitt to put another minister in charge of getting the message across? As they said of King George III at the end — he talks constantly but makes no sense.

These letters are patronising and pointless; missives from a man fir- ing blanks. They are not even risible, they’re just a joke.

Why publish them? They contain no direction, new or old, no new policy, no “message”. Surely No 10 cannot believe that if bird flu wipes out half of Britain, or even two ducks on the coast of Scotland, it will be able to escape responsibility by saying: “Look, we told him that was one of his jobs”?

The letter to John Prescott lists the “nine Cabinet committees” the Deputy Prime Minister is now to chair, in his role “co-ordinating government policy across the full range of domestic policy areas”: things such as the Post Office network committee, animal rights activists and “inspection”. Not NHS reform, not public service reform. Not antisocial behaviour, asylum, schools or crime. Post offices. This is the “important job” the DPM boasted about in the Commons last week. That, and going to China a lot. Mr Blair could hardly have humiliated Mr Prescott more.

But the Prime Minister is in the business of humiliation now, too. Humiliating and overriding. Look at the letter to Lord Falconer: to “speed up justice”, whatever that means, “this will include implementing pre-court diversions as soon as the review is complete”. Some review that is, then. Just as he announced his decision on the energy review last week, before it had even reported. And just as he apparently intends to scrap the power of the House of Lords to block his Bills.

We have a Prime Minister who seems to believe that if only he had more power, flexed it more openly and wielded it more ruthlessly, he could get everything he wants. The Prime Minister has gone quite mad.

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