He was given a little office without cabinets, and after he built a shelf there, by bolting a steel plate to an exposed steel girder, he sent his friends a photograph of himself lying across it, and boasted that if the shelf ever collapsed the building would go down with it.
And if that could not be achieved without the cabinet jumping off Westminster Bridge, "the cabinet will have to jump".
With or without shadow cabinet elections, a lot of senior Labour figures will not serve in his team anyway.
There are quite enough groups in our society doing serious crime already without the cabinet minister responsible for law and order adding one more.
Of the 11 Chelsea players that started, Kurt Zouma is the only one without a cabinet full of winners' medals and experience on the very highest stage - the Champions League and the World Cup.
As Afghan forces assume sovereignty, the country is without a cabinet, three months after Ghani's inauguration, and economic growth is near zero due to the reduction of the international military and aid juggernauts.
Drastic action was required and in two extraordinary expenditure review committee meetings on 26 and 31 July the government, without consulting cabinet submissions from departments, agreed to a series of tax changes and spending adjustments to slash an extra $1.5bn off the deficit.
He wrote: "Cameron's promise of devolution, now for all parts of country, without consulting cabinet, clever politics, but divisions in all parties".
On 19 June, Chancellor Philipp Scheidemann resigned rather than sign the treaty and was followed by Brockdorff-Rantzau and other members of the government, leaving Germany without a cabinet or peace delegation.
