In the first week of any new job there is always a lot to sort out, which could perhaps explain the new deputy leader of the Labour party’s lack of blogging. Harriet Harman’s last blog entry begins: “The polls for Labour’s deputy leadership election close in one hour.”
With the other big announcement of the week being Brown’s first cabinet, the BBC’s Nick Robinson could be heard on any number of bullets declaring it the biggest post-war cabinet shake-up. He even analysed the two cabinets in figures.
But Robinson’s view of such an upheaval has been dismissed as hyperbole in many quarters. Burning Our Money starts by highlighting the consistencies between the two cabinets at the Treasury, in health, children, schools, families and works and pensions. He then concludes: “You know, I was going to go through the whole lot, but I’m now so depressed I think I’ll have a large shot of absinthe.
“Never in the history of Big Government has so much blood been spilled on so many ministerial carpets for so few benefits.”
Fountain has dissected the new cabinet in terms of what each member did before they went into politics. The list basically consists of public sector workers, trades unionists, layers and charity workers with a few hacks thrown in the mix. The selection has been criticised for lacking anyone from the private sector, outside the lawyers and journalists, and for not representing a cross-section of the population.
Bill Jones sees the reshuffle as representative of Brown’s new Government in eight symbols: continuity with Blair; women; education; sooth feelings in NHS; Iraq; rewarding loyalists; youthful energy; and what he describes as ‘all talents’. He concludes: “All in all a clever and well planned reshuffle, contrasting favourably with Blair’s chaotic efforts.”
For Tom Clougherty at the Adam Institute the most striking aspect of the cabinet reshuffle wasn’t the personnel, but the reorganisation of Government departments. The Department for Trade and Industry (DTI – often called the Deterrent to Trade and Industry), has been renamed the Department for Business, Enterprise, and Regulatory Reform. Watch this space for blogging wags to come up for an alternative for the DBERR acronym.
In a week of new jobs, I would like to take this opportunity to say farewell to my fellow blog reviewer, Adam Haigh, who has decided to dedicate more time to his new job at Bloomberg. Best of luck.
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