Tony Blair approached his first cabinet reshuffle in classic New Labour style.

And until Frank Field stalked out of Downing Street to announce his resignation, it had all been going swimmingly.

Mr Blair had abandoned the traditional parade of sacked ministers having to run a media gauntlet in Downing Street before hearing their fate and re-emerge looking glum.

Instead, after finalising most of the details of the reshuffle at Chequers at the weekend, he travelled to his Commons office on Monday morning to sack the losers in private.

Gavin Strang and David Clark were quickly summoned to hear the most unsurprising piece of news either one of them had been given for a long time.

Like so much about New Labour, and to their huge anger, reports of their sackings had long been circulated by colleagues.

The prime minister's most difficult meeting was always going to be with his friend Harriet Harman.

He had finally bitten the bullet, seen off a rearguard action from Chancellor Gordon Brown to save her, and decided she should go.

The ex-Social Security spokesman: "will go to the backbenches with no bitterness or anger," insisted friends.

No so Frank Field. Just when the sackings appeared to be over and the good news management was being planned, he blew it all apart.

He shocked the waiting press by walking out of Downing Street to declare that, after two meetings with the Prime Minister, he had decided to resign.

It was immediately assumed the minister - who has already seen his radical welfare reform plans dumped - had turned down any attempts to placate him with other junior jobs outside Social Security.

The move was the biggest hiccup of the day - which to that point belonged to ministers like Stephen Byers, Peter Mandelson and Jack Cunningham - who has suddenly been transformed from yesterday's man to one of the most powerful ministers in the cabinet.

And once it had started - with Dr Cunningham's arrival at around 10am - it came in a rush.

The new cabinet 'enforcer' spent just under an hour discussing his new role with the prime minister before being followed through the famous black door by a host of ministers.

Baroness Jay, Margaret Beckett, Peter Mandelson, Nick Brown and Alistair Darling all passed the media scrum in their own style - Beckett smiling, Madelson scowling.

Downing Street refused to reveal any changes until all the top team had been completed.

But by one o'clock, all the big names had been and gone and, thanks to the usual batch of "helpful insiders" everyone had a pretty good idea of what the new cabinet was going to look like.