Morris departure shakes nervous cabinet

Tony Blair has sought to calm worries amongst ministers following the resignation of education secretary Estelle Morris for being crap.

Morris failed to meet promised targets, managed to ruin the country's A-level exam system, and caused a delay to the start of the new school year when police checks on teaching staff were botched. She didn't exactly make love to the camera either.

After several weeks of calls for her to go she finally stepped down following a dignified confession of her total uselessness and the usual complaint from a failed politician about unfair media coverage.

However, following her departure many of Morris's colleagues are understood to have called on the Prime Minister seeking clarification of their own positions.

One minister — who pleaded on his knees not to be named — told the Rockall Times: "It's all very well Estelle saying she couldn't hack it but what about the rest of us? I don't see that she was doing any worse than I am for instance. I can't afford to resign — I've got kids at private school, a Christmas holiday in the Caribbean coming up and a new patio being laid."

Another senior cabinet member — who also wished to remain anonymous — commented: "So she cocked up a couple of things. So what? I've cocked up bloody hundreds of things and I'm not going anywhere anytime soon." Pausing only to pat his guide dog on the head the shadowy bearded figure continued: "If only she'd managed to get all these bloody immigrant kids to speak English she wouldn't have had to go in the first place."

Many in New Labour were particularly shocked by Morris's belief that she felt she had to go after not meeting promised targets. "This sets a bad example, a really very, very bad example", said one balding and overweight MP as she slurped on a spirit and mixer in the House of Commons bar, "if ministers are supposed to be responsible for what the government does then we've got no chance. I suppose we'll just have to speed up the bombing of Iraq now."