The shadow cabinet look amotley crew because there alot of of low calibre poepl in thee who were not elected for their abilties.

For a variety of reasons the most outstanding candidates do not always get elected to the shadow cabinet. Whether left or right,give Ed the chance to choose the best candidates rather than being forced to lead some, although not all, duds.

It will also make the team more cohesive and focussed

Your problem is Clegg.

@ David Lindsay.

Outstanding post!

Judging by the comments on this page, it is clear most see OG's as a tired old has been with nothing new to say. Surely there cannot be a shortage of NS bloggers, as most of the contributions by OG are treated with derision. I think OG needs to look a little closer to home. This piece by OG is not only crass but widely misses the point. By all accounts is is the predicament of Nick Clegg that OG should be worried about. The LD's got a kicking in the the last local elections. The idea that the LD's can survive after the next election is fanciful. The LD's has better get their job hunting kits on!!

and who backs the lib dems now Olly..put it too the test if you need to.

"This move looks to have all the charactieristics of a leadership defeat"

Just goes to show how little the jelly chin wonder has bothered to check the very positive reactions from Labour party grassroots. Go sort out that revolting appendage flapping off your neck before gobbling on nonsensically.

What would help Comrade Ed would be a more energetic and engaging shadow cabinet.

You get the feeling that some of those shadowistas - after being in govt -are not that committed or interested in their roles.

The denizens of working men's clubs have always been very reluctant Labour voters. In the past. a million reasons not to vote Labour but economically the wage earner knew only too well where to put his cross.
Many of the viewpoints expressed in the working men's clubs of old, on stage and off, cannot now be voiced in public. Unless you want a prison sentence or a sacking. Even attendees at Conservative Conferences have to be pretty wary.
Don't see any Marxist party, apart from the Marx Bros antics performed by members of this cobbled-together ConDem government, in power at the moment.
Working-men's club types are a little skittish at present. They bought that 'salt of the earth' flattery and are now being taxed indirectly through the nose.
By the by, where are all those 'stand-up comics' tutored by the working men's clubs? And their jokes?
Has-beens

Most of the Shadow Cabinet come across as sulky and apathetic. As though the jobs are beneath they have been spoiled by being in government.

Ed Milliband needs to get some fresh blood in there, who have not been in government.They at least will be keen and enthused to do their job.

Olly why are you worrying about the Labour party, shouldn't you be worrying about the parlous state your own party is in and the fact that it's hard to find one person who actually believes Nick Clegg? They all think he is an unprincipled liar.

"wouldn't this have been the moment to have an answer on the structural deficit and Labour's answer on the economy?"

trotting out that lie in desperation (again). Labour has said it would aim to reduce the deficit by 50% and has always had a plan. They always had a plan (and it was rather similar to the one the LDs pretended to have pre-election, but which was abandoned when the opportunity for power beckoned).

And as for buying in to the Tory's "structural deficit" PR spin: why don't you just join their party and be done with it". You probably don't even know what it means - look it up - you will be surprised how nebulous and unmeasurable a number it is.

Olly, considering your party is involved in dismantling the NHS, about to hand most public services over to ever so efficent private companies and has done more in a year to damage Britain than Labour managed in 13 years (and I am one pissed off Labour member, I can tell you), I think the leader whose head whsould be on the block is your very own Nick "Calamity" Clegg. Glass houses and stones do not mix. BTW, do you think the LibDems will do better than come sixth in the next by election?

There was no point having Shadow Cabinet elections unless they were going to give us the fun of watching some pointless Blair Babe of either sex humiliated by defeat at the hands of someone like Michael Meacher or Frank Dobson. Not for any political reason in the higher sense. Just for the fun of it.

I don't know why John McDonnell is complaining. As the appointment of Diane Abbott to one of the lowlier positions already in his gift illustrates, Ed Miliband offers the Campaign Group far more hope of appointment than the PLP has ever offered it hope of election. He is returning to John Smith's inclusive approach to party management, and getting rid of Shadow Cabinet elections is one way of going about that while he waits for those still loyal to his unmentionable brother to jump or be pushed into standing down altogether in 2015 or 2020.

But let there be no talk of a "Clause IV moment". That Clause did not mention nationalisation, although it certainly allowed for it; it had been framed so that people who already had nationalisation in mind could read that presupposition into it, even though no one could have read that presupposition out of it. But Tony Blair and his fan club thought that it was about nothing else. So, in repudiating it, they repudiated public ownership in order to repudiate everything that public ownership delivered and safeguarded, notably national sovereignty, the Union, and the economic basis of paternal authority.

Likewise, in repudiating trade unionism, they repudiated controlled immigration and the moderating influence of the wider electorate in the affairs of the Labour Party. Mercifully, that latter, at least, reasserted itself in the victory of Ed Miliband over the Blairite candidate. But it still needs to be reasserted that requiring the production of a union card is no different from requiring the production of a British passport or a work permit, while the closed shop was as important for that as it was for giving the Tory forty-five per cent of the industrial working class a moderating influence in the selection of Labour candidates for the safe Labour seats in which they lived.

Ed Milliband is right to tackle the shadow cabinet question. He is also right that is the appropriate time to do it (one year since his election as Party leader, and one year from its re-confirmation (or not)). He will stand or fall by the outcome. So will the Party. Clearly, one year since the general elections, the Party is still suffering from public fatigue of seeing and hearing of the same political names and figures. They should have faded out gracefully, but they did not and have as a consequence become an encumbrance to Ed and, more than that, to the Party. Most of these shadows are really shadows, and their time is up. Their miserable performance is unfortunately reflecting also on Ed Milliband. It is damaged baggage that he has been obliged to carry because of the Party rules. So, a look and review of these rules is more than welcome at this point in time of the coalitions life-span. It is far from being a distraction. If the party accepts this change, there is more than ample time for it to recover lost ground with the coalition continuing messing up things.

Ed Milliband should be replace with someone more culturally acceptable to the working class. Someone who listens to our concerns and understands our problems. What does this boy know or understand about working folks lives. He's more at home at Marxist weekends then a working men's club.