It was not Tony Blair’s finest moment. Facing ranks of baying Tories at prime minister’s question time on Wednesday, he found himself forced to defend the indefensible.

Charles Clarke was “sorting out” the scandal in which more than 1,000 foreign criminals had been released from prison without being considered for deportation, he said. “It is right that he continues to do that.”

With that the prime minister, savaged at the dispatch box for the second week running, swept out of the Commons chamber, leaving the home secretary to face the angry house alone.

Rarely have words of support carried less warmth or conviction. Clarke knew that the end was near.

At 2.30 that afternoon he had a meeting with Sir Iqbal Sacranie, secretary-general of the Muslim Council of Britain, who asked if there would be a public inquiry into the July 7 London bomb attacks.

Clarke’s response spoke volumes. “If you really want to know,” he said resignedly, “you’ll have to ask the new home secretary.”

Not yet, however: Clarke had to endure the facade of prime ministerial favour until voters had given their verdict on the government’s travails in Thursday’s local elections.

As they went to the polls, another damning revelation emerged to confirm Clarke’s fate: a foreign criminal who had been allowed to stay in Britain after release from prison was now facing charges relating to terrorism.

When this reached Blair’s ears, he acted ruthlessly. On Thursday afternoon, as voters were wreaking havoc on Labour in the local elections, he made final preparations for the most brutal cabinet reshuffle of his career. Clarke’s was not the only senior head to fall. Disregarding friendship, experience and all pretence of broad church Labour politics, Blair cut a swathe through the top ranks of the cabinet.

Out from the senior offices of state went anyone with whom there had been friction or even the merest whiff of disloyalty, including Jack Straw, the foreign secretary, as Blair fashioned a praetorian guard of über-loyalists who — if little else — could be counted upon to do exactly as they were told. Blair, it seemed, was digging in for the final stretch as he tries to live out his vow to stay in office for the rest of this parliament.

To supporters this was the resolute action of a prime minister who, having won three terms, remains his party’s dominant force; to opponents it was “the last desperate efforts of a drowning man”.

“This is about survival, Tony is protecting himself,” said one senior Labour MP. “It’s about stamping his authority on the cabinet. He wants to be surrounded by people who can be trusted. People who will fight to the last.”

Others were less sympathetic. As the full line-up took shape on Friday, there was disbelief among the wider parliamentary party at the audacity of the prime minister’s changes. Senior party insiders normally sympathetic to the prime minister warned of disastrous consequences, accusing Blair of pushing the parliamentary party to the brink of civil war.

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