Jacqui Smith will pay for expenses gaffe in reshuffle

The resignation of 'Dolly’ Draper from the LabourList website over ‘Smeargate’ is only the first taste of the wholesale shake-up of the Labour team that Gordon Brown is planning after the expected defeats in the European and county elections on June 4.

Promotion for Yvette Cooper and a job swap for Jacqui Smith are the Mole's main tips for the reshuffle that Brown hopes will shore up his collapsing authority.

Ms Cooper, one half of Labour’s 'golden couple' with husband Ed Balls, the Children's Secretary, is highly regarded by Brown in her current role as Chief Secretary to the Treasury, and is now ready for a lift up the ladder.

Brown's Cabinet colleagues reckon that Jacqui Smith is certain to be moved out of the Home Office for the run-up to the general election after the expenses scandal in which she claimed for her husband's 'adult' film viewing in what is laughably claimed to be her second home in her West Midlands constituency.

However, the word in the Cabinet is that she's too loyal to Brown to be dropped altogether. "She'll survive," said one Cabinet minister. "She'll be moved into a safe department."

There are high expectations that she could be given a job swap with Alan Johnson, the Health Secretary. Looking after bed pans in the NHS could be just the thing for Smith, while Johnson as Home Secretary, one of the three big jobs of state, would reflect Brown's increasing reliance on his colleague's public popularity to minimise Labour's defeat at the election.

Brown is certain to sack Hazel Blears but he can't be seen to be targeting the women in the Cabinet, so Cooper's promotion to take charge of a Whitehall department will be used to show that women can still succeed in Brown's Cabinet.

Casualties of 'Smeargate' could include the e-minister Tom Watson who was copied into the emails sent by Damian McBride and is part of the war room team in Downing Street overseen by Brown's Cabinet coordinator, Liam Byrne.

Pat McFadden, the Post Office minister, is one of the young highly rated ministers of state who could get promotion into the Cabinet to show that Brown can match David Cameron for bringing on young talent.

McFadden has been doing his master's bidding over the part-privatisation of the Royal Mail and a move would avoid McFadden having to cope with the threatened mass rebellion by Labour MPs appalled at the Royal Mail proposal. It could also give Brown an excuse for shelving the scheme until after the election.

The message from the Brown Bunker is that he's going to focus on winning the big global battles against terrorism and recession - and stop picking fights in Westminster that he can't win.