Ed Miliband has put his shadow cabinet house in order. It isn’t a full Grand Designs-style rebuild, more a fresh lick of paint and some urgent structural repairs. (For a start he had two big holes to fill after John Denham and John Healey resigned last night.)
As generally predicted, members of the 2010 intake have been aggressively promoted — Rachel Reeves, who covered pensions before, has shown herself capable of being an effective, attacking opposition player even with a highly technical brief and has been rewarded with the job of Shadow Chief Secretary to the Treasury.
Chuka Umunna was tipped for big things even before he was officially selected as an election candidate in Streatham last year. Now he gets a chance at the top table as shadow business secretary. He’s a good media performer and will give the portfolio a higher profile.
Expect more from Labour on small businesses, the junior business brief Umunna had until today. Part of the strategy (although you’d never have guessed it) is to woo smaller enterprises, the self-employed etc over as part of Miliband’s assault on “vested interests”. The Labour leader wants to be on the side of “the little guy” against giant corporate monopolies and bankers. If he pulls it off it would be an audacious political land grab — small business is traditional Tory terrain.
An interesting dynamic to watch will be how Reeves and Umunna, two ambitious newbies with things to say about the economy, get along with Ed Balls. He is Reeves’s boss on the Treasury team now, of course. But not Chuka’s…
The big surprise is Stephen Twigg’s move to Education. He is part of the 2010 intake, although he was first elected to parliament in 1997, defeating a famously stunned Michael Portillo in Enfield and Southgate. It was a dramatic moment that for many symbolised the scale of the Tory rout. Twigg is a Blairite by reputation and the move probably reflects Labour’s recognition of the need for a more sophisticated critique of Michael Gove’s school reforms — themselves conceived as an extension of Blair’s education agenda — than Andy Burnham had managed.
Burnham moves to health. Last night I wrote on the blog that this was rumoured, but I questioned whether he would be any more effective against Lansley than he was against Gove. I still have my doubts.
Labour has a bigger problem when it comes to the health and education briefs, which is that the party’s ideological position on the use of markets, private sector providers and consumer choice in the public sector is unclear. If Burnham couldn’t express a view on that question with regard to schools, what makes anyone think he’ll express one clearly over hospitals?
And without giving the impresion that he’s denouncing government policy without any prospect of an alternative reform agenda. But then, I suppose, just attacking government policy on the NHS is an easier hit — voters are primed to fear the effects of Tory policy on hospitals, less so with schools.
Liz Kendall, who I mentioned as a rising star with a command of the health portfolio, will be attending shadow cabinet as minister for care and older people. All in all, it looks like a sensible re-jig, not too cautious but not a drastic long-knife frenzy either.
One appointment, sure to attract much notice, is the appointment of Tom Watson, scourge of Murdoch, to the role of deputy party chair and campaign coordinator. He has always been a formidable political attack dog and Miliband is clearly hoping he will get his teeth into more than just News International. But before he was hailed as a hero for his role in hackgate, Watson had a reputation as a ruthless internal party schemer. There will be plenty of people warning Ed to keep him on a tight leash.
The full list of new shadow cabinet appointments is here.
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