The Liberal Democrats have an online petition calling for Charles Clarke to resign. I've signed it, and this is why:

There are clear signs that the Home Office and its various sub-departments are not performing as they should. They're either not performing their basic duties, or not communicating with each other. This is due either to mismanagement, under-resourcing or systemic problems.

And yet, under Charles Clarke, the Home Office has been very, very busy. Just this year, we've had the ID Cards Act, Racial and Religious Hatred Act, a new Terrorism Act and a new Immigration, Asylum and Nationality Act. Barely a week goes by without some new initiative being announced.

So if they have the time - and money - for ID cards, why don't they make better use of it by targetting genuinely dangerous, convicted criminals rather than wasting it? They expect to be trusted to run an ID card system, with an ID database, but they can't even track dangerous criminals who have already been arrested, tried and convicted.

All of this demonstrates a serious failure to identify priorities. By chasing the headlines rather than doing the unglamorous work of making existing systems function properly, Charles Clarke has let the public down. Perhaps if he had devoted more time to solving real problems than to picking fights with the media, he might not be in the mess he's in now.