No, Whitehall is not pleased about Gordon Brown’s reshuffle. People are particularly furious about Mr Brown’s last-minute decision to create a superministry for Peter Mandelson by handing him the Department for Innovation, Universities and Skills (DIUS) – in addition to his existing responsibilities for Business, Enterprise and Regulatory Reform. What has outraged Whitehall is that they have only just finished setting up DIUS.

“Its ludicrous,” says one Whitehall knight. “Gordon’s only done it to reward Mandy for saving his political skin and it must mean that DIUS will be the shortest-lived department ever. The universities will hate it. This will open up all the old arguments about pure research versus research for business. The one certainty is that the new giant department won’t last.”