"As a matter of fairness, the committee concluded, we should offer the prime minister, if he wished to take it up, the opportunity for him, for David Miliband his foreign secretary and Douglas Alexander the development secretary to attend hearings before the general election,".

VOA: standard.2010.01.22

But senior figures, including Ed Balls, Yvette Cooper and Douglas Alexander, retain their existing positions.

BBC: Ed Miliband promotes fresh faces to Labour top team

Shadow foreign secretary Douglas Alexander said as much last week but no-one seemed to notice.

BBC: Cameron facing EU budget dilemma

But if Douglas Alexander, Labour's whizz-kid candidate, does indeed win, Tony Blair will be mightily relieved.

ECONOMIST: By-election boulders