When launching 'Cutting Crime 2 years on', this month, Gordon Brown sat on the same conference platform as Home Secretary Jacqui Smith, thanked her for her contribution and indicated that it had been a pleasure working with her.  At that point she became politically dead and now less than two weeks later she has resigned.

Apparently selected for her homely appeal to voters, Jacqui Smith was a complete change from her predecessors and something of a surprise appointment in the summer of 2007.  However, in post she lacked confidence and clearly struggled, making a series of blunders as well as suffering personal embarrassments.

We now have another Home secretary vacancy - one of the most important roles in a Government apparently in terminal decline. What NCSN members' will undoubtedly be thinking now is where we go next?

Will a promising politician with a bright future take a risk, or will an overnight batsman step to the crease?  Hopefully the post will not be filled with someone discredited elsewhere or a failed minister reshuffled from another department.

So who does that leave?

Another new face or the return of an old one?

Any volunteers out there?