Many might have placed bets on it happening long before now, but Chris Grayling has finally resigned as transport secretary. One would say bon voyage but then there was that time he was 'banned' from Calais so...maybe not.
For other recent occupants of the transport secretary job, there could be some sympathy in failure.
Tough cuts and unforseen issues on the West Coast Mainline, which he had little or nothing to do with, meant Patrick McLoughlin was dealt a difficult hand but managed a respectable showing.
Justine Greening took over a department in so much flux it is difficult to pronounce any reasonable judgement.
However these issues cannot be said of Mr Grayling. He took over a department still critically understaffed in certain areas but in a steady condition, with clear sight of the issues it faced and strong financial backing, at least at the national network level.
His old job was, as it remains, an immensely difficult one with so many moveable parts that are less under the secretary's control than the public might realise.
However in the areas he could affect change his performance was dire and he made his excellent department look bad.
From blocking the devolution of rail services in London on crass political grounds, to disfiguring the concept of the major roads network from something structural and sophisticated to 'a billion a year for bypasses' Mr Grayling's minor failures were bad enough.
His tortuous negotiations with unions over the issue of driver only operation will probably live as long in the minds of those in the south as the collapse of the rail timetabling system will in the north.
His public failure on the Brexit ferries was perhaps the nadir and made him a national laughing stock.
In taking shortcuts on the procurement - not to mention hiring a British ferry firm that had no ships - he ended up paying out tens of millions in compensation to other firms, then even more in cancelling the contracts after they weren't used beacuse they had no contingency planning built in (despite these being contingency contracts).
Brexit has made fools of all of us in one way or another. As with power itself, it reveals (as well corrupts).
It brought out the worst in Grayling sadly. Unable to admit or concede difficulties or defeat, even when faced with impossibilities, he pushed ahead into a quagmire.
Politically obdurate, and partisan to a major fault, the solutions that could have been available to more flexible and magnanimous people never seemed to be available to him.
Surely there was a way of lessening the fallout from the timetabling crisis, when it was first known that things could go wrong? Surely Brexit contingency planning, especially for issues like key medicines, should always been left to the Cabinet Office, as it is now, rather than foisted on an overstretched department?
Mr Grayling says his proudest moment was progressing Heathrow. Hardly an uncontroversial project. Even in his choice of proudest moment there is something lumpish.
So allow me to suggest my own greatest Grayling hit.
Monarch Airlines collapsed on 2 October, 2017. As a result, Mr Grayling's department supported the repatriation of more than 100,000 people - the UK’s biggest peacetime operation.
Now of course, Mr Grayling had little to do with the planning of this but that is somewhat the point.
The DfT was made to look bad under Grayling when it is in fact capable of incredible feats, and is a world leaders in its field.
Sometimes leadership is about trusting in the judgement of your team and letting them get on with it, sometimes it means protecting them from unfair or even impossible requests and workloads passed down from the higher ups.
It is in these two areas Grayling seemed to fail the most.
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