Those presentational geniuses of Downing Street have come up with another fabulous wheeze to improve the image of the Prime Minister: take the Cabinet on the road. The first top-level ministerial meeting after the summer holidays will be in the West Midlands. One presumes that the roadshow will not, thereafter, be stopping in Crewe, Henley or Glasgow East, but with this Government's Midas touch it would be silly to discount the prospect.

The idea of mobile Cabinet meetings is not actually new. The patrician French President Valery Giscard d'Estaing held meetings outside Paris between 1974 and 1976. But that probably owed more to the desire of French ministers to dine in Lyon, rather than a wish to mingle with the paysans. And none of it did M. Giscard any good at the ballot box.

Still, going on the road will give Mr Brown a chance to throw disloyal Cabinet ministers under the wheels of the Government convoy. David Miliband might be advised to make sure he buckles his seat belt come September.