It will be interesting to see whether Jacqui Smith can generate some positive publicity out of her long-delayed police green paper today. She's had a rough time lately, some of it her own fault, not least the confusion over the plan - later denied - to make young wannabe hardmen, kids caught with knives, watch knife victims being stitched together again in A&E.
I've never thought much of occasional suggestions that she might be Labour's post-Gordon answer. Gordon is still the answer and, if I'm wrong about that, the answer is probably David Miliband, which reinforces my view that I'm not wrong.
Smith, a former high school head of economics, is 44, a bit young for me to know her well (politics, like much else, is partly about cohorts), but she strikes me as grounded in real life and has a sense of humour. She's also hung on to her marginal Redditch seat despite the fallout from Longbridge's troubles.
But a future Labour leader? I don't think so, not least because her majority of 2,716 may not survive the coming election: she was one of those who favoured a poll last autumn. But she's also too sensible to hanker after that particular form of insanity.
However, good or bad headlines for today's green paper, there is better news for her department; news which will generate few, if any, headlines.
Two years after the then-home secretary, John Reid, declared his new department "not fit for purpose" it has got a much better end-of-term report from Whitehall's internal review team.
Something called the "capability reviews" was established by Sir Gus O'Donnell, the self-effacing but politically adroit cabinet secretary, who survived being John Major's press secretary (he took himself off to Washington for a political detox) to become trusted by both Blair and Brown: he's now Whitehall's No 1 man, keen to raise the bureaucracy's game.
Capability reviews examine each ministry and test whether they can do the tasks they're supposed to do.
Three are published today, the others being the children's department and DWP. League tables are now published. Last time - much as Reid said - the Home Office came bottom - poor on planning, weak on risk assessment, leadership, delivery and IT. Remember how it messed up the foreign prisoner release programme and finished off Charles Clarke's career?
Anyway, the good news out today is that the updated review has given the department better marks in seven out of 10 categories. That translates as no area of serious ongoing concern, though still plenty of room for improvement ("you are improving, but not fast enough") and only one area of strength: the focus on outcomes. Back in 2006 they couldn't even produce accounts. For two years running the accounts have been signed off unqualified.
"We never declare victory," the permanent secretary, Sir David Normington, reminds the colleagues.
But staff were interviewed in outposts from Croydon to Liverpool and were also telling a more positive story. "Fit for purpose", as a cheerful minister in the Home Office said to me when our paths crossed last night.
Well, it's a hellish department to run. Even in its shrunken state - tricky things like the media long since hived off and the criminal justice system now in Jack Straw's MoJ - it has a huge range of things that can go wrong: police, immigration, counter-terrorism, drugs, etc.
And so many of them involve individual case files - paper or electronic - where the devil lies in the detail, much of it complex. They had a bad IT crash in 2002 and lost their nerve a bit. It's getting better again now, the review has concluded.
Part of the change may be down to better leadership at the top and better relations with the politicians who set the pace of policy.
Sir John Gieve, the chap who got much of the blame for not spotting the Northern Rock crisis brewing, was eased out of the perm sec's job by David Blunkett, Charles Clarke bringing Normington across from education. Gieve ended up at the Financial Services Authority. 'Nuff said.
When Clarke was forced out, Normington inherited Reid, who once burst in on a Normington briefing I was present for and took it over. I'm fond of John Reid and what he did was very funny, but he's not talking to me since I described him as a 'headline grabber" in print.
Fortunately, he now has Celtic FC to worry about - as its chairman - and it's in Glasgow East too.
Where were we? Normington has been able to recruit new senior staff from outside since the MoJ split in 2007, from elsewhere in Whitehall, from local authorities and the private sector.
That's always good, though it also means that in-house collective memory and wisdom is lost. Even continuity with old colleagues, now at the MoJ, will fade as people retire.
Is any of this interesting to outsiders I wonder? It matters because the Home Office is always important and nowadays is the nearest thing we have to what the Americans turned into a freestanding Department of Homeland Security - whose badges visitors now see at US airports.
Security assessment, the joint intelligence committee (JIC) which got into trouble over Iraq, remains in the Cabinet Office, but operations are at the Home Office.
Of course, internal capability reviews are just that: internal, though feet are held to the fire in the process of outside civil servants quizzing staff, and there is also accountability via Commons committees and the national audit office.
Part of today's green paper is designed to make the police - one of the agencies the Home Office supervises at arm's length - more locally accountable and more visible on the ground in local communities.
How do you do this? By exhortation around the table with senior officers and via that old standby, extra cash, always a good form of leverage.
So if local people say part of the antisocial problem is kids with too little to do on a Friday night, the neighbourhood police team is now meant to get stuck in and help find a solution - more youth clubs open at weekends, for instance.
All difficult stuff, but part of a wider drive - yet again - to tackle problems "upstream of crime" which means targeting problem families. Which was where Jacqui Smith started her busy week. Next week will be quieter.
