After a brief flurry of rumours on Wednesday evening, another week has ended without the long-awaited Labour reshuffle taking place. It’s now likely that it won’t take place until after the conference season – and wisely so.
Delaying the reshuffle until October has the benefit of turning Labour’s Brighton gathering into a beauty parade, with every current and would-be shadow minister doing their best to impress, and avoiding the risk of disgruntled former ministers roaming the conference bars.
Politically speaking, next week will be dominated by the TUC Congress, which Ed Miliband is addressing on Tuesday, and the run-up to Lib Dem conference (on which note, look out for two major interventions in next week’s NS).
The former in particular is good reason for Labour to delay. A reshuffle immediately after the trade union gathering would make it easy for the Tories to pin any sackings on Len McCluskey and co. When I interviewed McCluskey earlier this year, in a now famous intervention, he suggested that Douglas Alexander, Liam Byrne and Jim Murphy – “the Blairites” – should be ignored or dismissed.
Since David Cameron often gives the appearance of believing that every decision in Labour is taken by McCluskey, I doubt Miliband will allow this to affect his decisions too much. But it would still be politically wise to put some distance between the two.
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