Does Straw want out of MoJ?

I have just come back from the Labour conference in Manchester. We had a stand with an exhibition featuring our campaign Growing up, shut up.

There were lots of interesting fringe meetings, and some gossip. I am told that Jack Straw is very unhappy being SoS for Justice, and he does look it. He was postively grumpy at the Barnardo’s fringe, saying some quite facile things involving victims. If he gets moved in the putative reshuffle maybe we will get someone who engages seriously with the real challenges.

And another thing. The bureaucratic nightmare that is NOMS has apparently put senior managers into stasis. The chief operating officer (no that isn’t the photocopying person, it is the DG) has to sign off several hundred individual appraisals for senior staff, I wonder he has time to do anything else.