Weekly Round-up - 23.01.11

This week will certainly be remembered for the two dramatic resignations that came on Thursday and Friday. Alan Johnson's decision to resign, taken late Thursday afternoon, was a shock because despite his rather embarrassing inability to master his economic brief he still retained the confidence of Ed Miliband. His decision to leave for personal reasons - it appears his wife is filing for divorce -will mean that the attacks on Miliband's personal judgement which will inevitably come next week will not be as effective. But the Labour leader will still have to answer some awkward questions now that Ed Balls, the man that he deliberately snubbed last year, is his new Shadow Chancellor.

We were also treated, early on Friday morning, to the resignation of Andy Coulson, David Cameron's Director of Communications. This was not a total surprise - it had been a question of when not if - but the timing was a little unexpected. The case against Coulson personally has a lot of circumstantial evidence but has so far lacked concrete proof. He had quite accurately realised that he had committed the cardinal sin for a press officer and become the story, but that had been true to some extent since he was hired. While it was excruciating to see an opportunistic Ed Miliband question Cameron's judgement just hours after his own inept Shadow Chancellor had walked, the PM will quite rightly face some hard questions next week about his decision to hire the former NotW Editor. As a final point, it is worth noting that without question both Johnson and Coulson chose to use the appearance of Tony Blair at the Chilcot inquiry as cover for their resignations.

The rest of the week was dominated by unemployment figures that made particularly depressing reading for young people, and the official launch of Andrew Lansley's NHS reforms, which - although well-intentioned and if successful will radically improve the way the NHS operates - represent an unusual gamble by the PM.