It's Friday so it must be Ford. Another day, another crisis for Stephen Byers. No sooner had the trade and industry secretary reversed out of Rover than along comes another car company problem.
The past two months proved a testing time for a Blairite minister, already burdened with tags such as "rising star" and "possible future prime minister", as BMW threatened to shut Longbridge and dump 24,000 West Midlanders on the dole.
Twice Mr Byers had to cancel holidays, on one occasion turning up at the Gatwick check-in desk to tell his partner Jan, who had just flown down from Newcastle, that their trip to Paris was off.
And the BMW fiasco brought to a head complaints that the Department of Trade and Industry is failing to champion Britain's trade and industry. The DTI has even been dubbed the Department of Timidity and Inaction by John Edmonds, head of the GMB general union.
"Don't worry about Steve Byers," remarked a battle-hardened Labour official. "It is just his turn. Every week one minister or another is in the firing line. Last time it was John Prescott, now it is Steve."
Mr Byers, who yesterday spoke to the Marconi boss, Lord Simpson, about state aid to secure a huge job-creating investment for the West Midlands, maintains he is no bystander.
He raised the prospect of a rescue bid for Longbridge with John Towers in the back of a government Rover 75 within 48 hours of BMW's announcement.
Yet it is not as simple as the Labour official suggested. Manufacturing has lost 206,000 jobs since the election and the high pound is crucifying exporters while Mr Byers, a strong supporter of the euro, looks on helplessly.
The DTI is in some ways the department for the Labour heartlands, its presence most needed in the industrial north and West Midlands.
Shortly after he was appointed at Christmas 1998, Mr Byers made a speech declaring that wealth creation was more important than wealth redistribution. During the week-long debate that ensued he was painted by leftwingers as an ultra-Blairite free marketeer happy to let firms go to the wall. "I wish I could teach him about politics," sighed a sympathetic backbencher.
Mr Byers is unapologetic about his statement, and, while opposing traditional intervention, yesterday said he believed the government did have a role in guiding industry.
"We have to ensure that the market is our servant and not our master," he said. "One of the roles of the government is to help people through a process of change and it is about being on their side. We are going to be there for the hard times and not only the easy ones."
To bolster their man his supporters cite everything from banging on BMW's door to open the way for the Towers team to a £530m loan for British Aerospace to design a superjumbo and spending £100m to keep pits open.
Detractors say he failed to move when Marks & Spencer scrapped UK contracts, putting thousands in the textile industry out of work.
Mr Edmonds said: "I think he has been very badly let down by his department. At times the DTI is a joke. Ask any businessman who deals with it and they will tell you the first thing they are told is what it cannot do. Stephen Byers has to shake it up or he risks going down with the department."
Britain's main business papers, the Economist and the Financial Times, constantly snipe at the minister, while the Sun once asked: "What is the point of Stephen Byers?" The attack was possibly in revenge for his decision to block Sky TV's takeover of Manchester United.
Big business is less hostile, and Digby Jones, director general of the CBI, was recently dropped from a TV programme after being deemed insufficiently critical by the producers. Parliamentary colleagues also like Mr Byers, who is attentive to constituency issues.
The DTI has always been a bed of nails and Margaret Thatcher and John Major went through about a dozen secretaries of state during the Tory era.
The big test
Tony Blair is already on his third in three years. The first, Margaret Beckett, introduced the minimum wage and laid the foundation for new employment rights, but lost out to Gordon Brown in spending battles and was the victim of a Downing Street "whispering" campaign. The second, Peter Mandelson, was well respected by his officials and impressed businessmen, but was distrusted by union leaders.
The DTI is Mr Byers's first big test as a minister. When he was at education as schools minister, David Blunkett took the flak. When he was chief secretary at the Treasury, Gordon Brown took the hits. Now he is on his own.
Mr Byers, a former Newcastle law lecturer, graduated from the hard left on north Tyneside during the 1980s to the New Labour respectability of the late 1990s. When he was elected to Westminster for Tyneside North in 1992 and Alan Milburn won Darlington the same year, the then thirtysomethings were com pared to Brown and Blair. Now they are both fortysomethings (47 in Mr Byers's case), and Mr Milburn is rated the Blair figure in the combination - but a health crisis could soon reverse the positions.
Mr Byers intends to concentrate on the regions, particularly the north and West Midlands, which would go down well with Labour's core voters.
After Phoenix pulled off its Rover coup last Tuesday, Mr Byers received bouquets rather than brickbats from Labour backbenchers as he enjoyed a pint on the Commons terrace. "Steve's had the guts to do the right thing and the outcome is a good one. The most short-term thing to have done would have been to throw money at it," said a ministerial colleague.
As he spends the weekend contemplating next week's good news from Marconi, Mr Byers should keep his fingers crossed another crisis does not blow up to take the shine off the announcement. But if he does get through the week without a crisis, he knows there will be another one along soon.
