Just a wee thought, based on nothing more than idle speculation and a fervent personal hope. It's to do with arguably Britain's finest orchestra and the country's greatest living conductor. Surely it's a match made in classical music heaven: that Simon Rattle should take over at the helm of the London Symphony Orchestra when Valery Gergiev's tenure ends in 2015, and shortly before - well, "shortly" in the context of the geological time-frames with which classical music's institutions plan ahead - Rattle rescinds his Berlin Philharmonic job in 2018.

There is at least one sign that the musical planets could be aligning to bring together the most dynamic and inspirational British conductor there has arguably ever been with the British orchestra that has been the country's most consistently brilliant for at least 15 years now. Simon Halsey, the choral conductor whose leadership of the City of Birmingham Symphony Chorus was such a important partnership during Rattle's years with the CBSO, took up the same post with the LSO last year. Like Rattle, Halsey had the biggest choral job in Berlin with the Rundfunkchor Berlin from 2001, and together he and Rattle worked one some of the biggest projects of the Rattle-era with the Philharmoniker: Bach's St Matthew Passion, Brahms's German Requiem, the premiere of Jonathan Harvey's Weltethos. Maybe it's reading too much into a single appointment to say that Halsey's move to London means that Rattle could also be on his way, but it would surely make him feel even more comfortable with the LSO.

That's been the issue in the past, that Rattle hasn't felt completely at home in London. In earlier decades, there was a feeling that the relationship between him and orchestras in the capital didn't click in the same way it did in Birmingham. But performances at the Royal Opera House and with the LSO in the last few years have seemed to put all of those historical issues to bed. Rattle conducted one of the great musical evenings in Covent Garden's recent history, a scintillating account of Debussy's Pelléas et Mélisande, and he led the LSO in an unforgettably thrilling Messiaen's Et Exspecto Resurrectionem Mortuorum and a radiant Bruckner 9.

But even more than the purely musical reasons - and they are many, not least that the LSO's versatility of repertoire, sheer sonic brilliance and collective virtuosity seem a more natural fit for Rattle's adventurous approach to repertoire and orchestra-building than the Berlin Philharmonic - the energy and leadership that Rattle could bring to the job could have a catalytic effect on the musical life of the whole of the UK. With the LSO, he would have players of astonishing flexibility and brilliance who need to be pushed in the ways that Rattle could push them: cementing new music at the heart of what they do, inspiring a more enlightened way of thinking about the classical and baroque repertoire the orchestra plays only rarely these days, renewing their relationship with 19th and 20th century masterpieces, and leading the orchestra's vision for how classical music can be at the heart of society. Rattle helped the Berlin Phil wake up to the possibilities of education and community projects; with the LSO, there wouldn't be any battles to make social initiatives happen, only to embed them still more strongly at the core of the orchestra's work.

Rattle's combination of rigorous preparation and irresistible dynamism on the podium is, I think, tailor-made for the LSO's music-making. There's also one other reason; trivial, yes, but nonetheless true: Rattle's decision not to renew his contract with the Berlin orchestra came out of the blue for the players there. Whatever the reasons behind his decision, the problems the Berlin Phil will have in choosing the right successor will allow the LSO - or whoever bags Rattle as their next chief - a justified sensation of Schadenfreude. Rattle is still the best person for the job in Berlin, and he will remain so in 2018. But he might just be an even better person for the LSO.