Isabel Hardman

The conventional wisdom about the consequences of the failure of Lords reform is that the Liberal Democrats will wreak their revenge for the Conservatives' 'breach of contract' by scuppering the boundary changes. Over the past few months, the party has taken great pains to link the two reforms, and now that it is clear that the first will not go through, all focus is on the second. There is much that still needs to become clear about how this will work; the biggest question of all being how Lib Dem ministers can vote against the changes without being sacked. But don't expect the whole party to troop through the 'no' lobby on this issue.

Let's forget for a minute about the Lib Dems and their dire threats of 'consequences' for the failure of the Lords Reform Bill and focus on the Conservative party. David Cameron has failed to convince his party to support the legislation. He said he needed the summer to try to win the rebels round before he tabled a new programme motion for the Bill, and before the summer is even out, he has decided that he can't do it. This isn't just about a hardcore of Conservative MPs who are viscerally opposed to Lords reform, though. There are those who would always have opposed it, but many others who might have been persuaded. There's a sense that the Prime Minister tried hard towards the end of the negotiations, but by then it was just too late.

It's a strange old world when a Prime Minister backing his own Chancellor is worth reporting. But this afternoon the Prime Minister was asked by Sky News whether he was going to reshuffle George Osborne. Naturally, he answered: 'George Osborne is doing an excellent job in very difficult circumstances and he has my full support in going on and doing that job. He's not going anywhere.' Kay Burley then pressed Cameron on whether this meant Osborne would still be Chancellor at the next election. He replied: 'Yes.' Now, this was quite obvious anyway.

TfL have today stopped running those Boris Johnson announcements over the tannoys at Underground and national rail stations that were rather getting on commuters' nerves. But their replacement seems to be trying to undo some of Boris' good work in trying to scare people away from the centre of London. Last night, Westminster Underground Station played an announcement telling tourists that the city was now 'really coming alive' and urging them to make the most of the restaurants, museums and shops that they found around them. The station was relatively quiet at the time, save for a group of men clutching large flags.

Boris Johnson has had a fantastic few days. On Thursday he drove a crowd in Hyde Park wild with his Mitt Romney banter. On Saturday he charmed the public with his thoughts on the Olympic opening ceremony ('People say it was all leftie stuff. That is nonsense. I'm a Conservative and I had hot tears of patriotic pride from the beginning. I was blubbing like Andy Murray.') Today, in between talking about glistening otters (which in itself is a feat: a politician getting away with talking about how wonderful it is to see semi-naked women in central London and not sounding like a dirty old man), he has emerged as ConHome readers' hot choice to lead the Tory party after David Cameron.