Media reaction to Ed Miliband's Shadow Cabinet reshuffle

By Matthew Barrett
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Following Ed Miliband's Shadow Cabinet reshuffle this afternoon, we can take a look at some of the reaction in the press:

• The Spectator's James Forsyth: "The Labour reshuffle is an attempt to bring more energy and aggression into Ed Miliband's top team. It is also a recognition that the party has failed to cut through on public service reform, hence new shadows at both health and education. Chuka Umunna's rapid promotion to shadow Business Secretary will, I suspect, dominate coverage of the reshuffle."
• The Daily Telegraph's James Kirkup: "Lord (Stewart) Wood is an old Brown hand who was already in the shadow cabinet. He’s joined there by his former office mate Michael Dugher ... stepping up from Ed’s PPS. Jon Trickett, the new shadow for the Cabinet Office, was also Mr Brown’s PPS. ... And the most interesting move of all is the arrival of the new Labour Party Deputy Chair and Campaign Coordinator: ladies and gents, I give you Mr Tom Watson." 
• Former education advisor to Blair, Conor Ryan: "It is good news that Stephen Twigg, an unashamed fan of academies, has been appointed by Ed Miliband as his new shadow education secretary. Andy Burnham never really regained the initiative having started badly"
• Iain Dale: "On balance, I would say that this reshuffle does indeed make Ed Miliband’s team stronger, especially from the point of view of getting on the media. That may seem a false priority, but if a politician can’t get on the media in opposition, they’re not much cop."
• The Daily Mail's Tim Shipman: "Tom [Watson] and Michael [Dugher] will both deny that they were part of the 'forces of hell', the group of Brown briefers who spent as much time denouncing their colleagues as their political opponents. But it is a fact that they were both close to Damian McBride before he disgraced himself. It is also worth remembering that McBride was also a brilliant Westminster operator before he got carried away. These guys understand the dark arts and they are good at them."

Ed Miliband to open up Labour leadership elections to the public?

By Matthew Barrett
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Will Ed Miliband open up Labour's leadership elections to the public? Not quite. Mr Miliband has tabled proposals at a meeting of Labour's National Executive Committee to create "tens of thousands" of "registered supporters" who will be eligible to vote in future leadership elections. However, the "registered supporters" would be included in the part of Labour's electoral college which includes the unions and affiliated socialist societies (the Fabian Society, Christian Socialist Movement, Labour Students, etc), which means - on the face of it - the unions’ share of the leadership votes will be cut.

Contrary to how this news might be reported, the proposal is modest and does not mean ordinary folk will really be able to influence elections. The reality is that non-party members have always been able to vote - the affiliated societies section can include non-members, and the trade unions section already includes plenty of non-Labour members. For example, members and supporters of the Conservatives, who were also union members, were allowed a vote in last year's Labour leadership election. 

The next Scottish Labour leader... Tom Harris MP?

By Matthew Barrett
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The BBC is reporting that Scottish Labour MP Tom Harris "has stated his interest in becoming the new Labour leader in Scotland.". Harris is firmly on the centre-left, and was one of Labour's star bloggers before leaving the blogosphere last year. He also stood, unsuccessfully, for the Shadow Cabinet elections after Ed Miliband became leader of the Labour Party late last year. 

The Scottish Labour leadership election has, so far, failed to look particularly professional, and this seems to be one of the reasons for Harris' entry into the race. The Scotsman has more details:

"Mr Harris, speaking on the BBC's Good Morning Scotland programme today, said he had put his name forward because of the lack of candidates to emerge from Labour's ranks at the Scottish Parliament.

He said: "The reason I have allowed my name to be mentioned in the speculation about this is purely and simply because we lost in May, Iain Gray announced he was standing down in September, which is next week, and I don't even know if that's going ahead."

Mr Harris added: "I am raising the possibility - the very slim possibility of my candidacy - because there are ideas that I have that I think the party should at least be debating, because by the time the next Scottish Parliament elections come up in 2016, we need to know what type of party Scottish Labour will be.""

Every Coalition spending cut is now opposed by Labour

By Matthew Barrett
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Labour politicians have long pointed to their "Plan B", and their deficit reduction strategy that would, apparently, be carried out slower than the Coalition plan, and be less "painful". Ed Balls, Labour's Shadow Chancellor, told the House on Thursday - in a debate on the Global Economy, during the recalled Parliament's sitting - that Labour's plan for the country was "a tough, medium-term plan to get our deficit down". (Read Ed Balls' contribution to the debate in Hansard here.)

Labour discussed whether to hold a public inquiry into phone-hacking... and chose not to

By Matthew Barrett
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Ben Bradshaw, who was the Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport for the latter part of the Brown Government, has admitted that the last Labour government discussed in Cabinet whether to hold a public inquiry into phone-hacking, but decided against doing so.

Bradshaw was on BBC Two's Daily Politics this afternoon (his appearance can be viewed on BBC iPlayer at around 12 minutes in). When asked why Labour didn't discuss the issue while in government, Bradshaw said:

"That was a discussion in the cabinet in the last year of the Labour government about whether to have a public inquiry, as Alan Johnson made clear in the Commons yesterday. That was, in effect blocked by the police and Gordon Brown had the added political difficulty that he was seen as a weakened Prime Minister. If we had gone down that route there would have been a hail storm not just from the Murdoch press but from all the other hostile media that we were just trying to find a diversion or an excuse"

So, Gordon Brown - with the knowledge of his Cabinet, which of course included Ed Miliband and Ed Balls - decided not to have an inquiry in case the News International newspapers attacked him. An interestingly honest admission from Ben Bradshaw.

One quarter of voters look at a photo of Ed Miliband and think it's David Miliband...

By Tim Montgomerie
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A photograph of one of the Miliband brothers.

Some light relief...

23% of people see a photo of Ed Miliband and think it's David Miliband and 26% of people think David Miliband is Ed Miliband.

33% of voters correctly recognise Yvette Cooper as Yvette Cooper but 20% think she's Harriet Harman.

30% of people correctly recognise Douglas Alexander as Douglas Alexander but just as many think he's Andy Burnham.

Only 25% of voters can correctly identify Jim Murphy. More voters (30%) identify him as Liam Byrne.

Ed Balls is the most recognisable member of the top Labour team. 68% correctly identify him. Only 64% correctly identify the Labour leader.

And in evidence that the Conservatives are serious about 'knowing the enemy', Conservative voters are more likely to correctly identify the Labour shadow cabinet than Labour voters.

The results come from a ComRes poll of more than 2,000 voters for The Independent.

Peter Hain refuses to condemn strike action

By Matthew Barrett
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Earlier on this week, the head of public-sector union UNISON, Dave Prentis, used belligerent and class-war rhetoric to call for "a campaign for strike action without precedent". 

You might think it would be politically sensible for Ed Miliband and his team to shut this story down and remove themselves from any possible strike action. As the Telegraph's James Kirkup reports, Mr Miliband certainly tried to, telling the Guardian:

"Personally I don’t think actually strike action is going to help win that argument and I think it inconveniences the public."

However, Peter Hain, who is leading a review into the structures and organisation of the Labour Party ("Refounding Labour"), refused to condemn strikes on the Andrew Marr Show this morning, saying:

"I don’t think political leaders, in opposition or in government, should either applaud strikes or condemn strikes."

Perhaps Mr Hain, in his review of Labour's foundations, is simply aware of just how dependent on the unions his Party is.

No wonder Miliband wants to scrap shadow cabinet elections - the same electorate wanted his brother as leader

By Jonathan Isaby
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It has emerged overnight that Ed Miliband wants to abolish the long-held tradition that when Labour is in opposition, the party's MPs vote to choose the membership of the shadow cabinet.

According to The Guardian, the reasons for the move - which would have to be the subject of a secret ballot of Labour MPs and endorsed by the party's autumn conference - are as follows:

Aides said he had taken the step to end the distraction of elections and to make his top team focus on the task of holding the government to account. They believe repeated internal elections make some shadow cabinet members as concerned by their popularity among their colleagues as with their impact on the general public.

One spokesman said: "Elections were a legacy from our previous time in opposition and it is a sign that Ed does not want the party to be dragged back to the 80s."

I posted the full results of last October's shadow cabinet elections here, but we perhaps need to look back at my post the following day to discover the real reason behind the move.

As I noted, only five of the 19 elected shadow cabinet members as voted in by Labour MPs backed Ed Miliband for the Labour leadership last year. Ten backed his brother, David.

And lest we forget, if the ballot for the Labour leadership had taken place among MPs alone, David Miliband would now be at the helm of his party, rather than his younger brother.

So it's little wonder that Ed doesn't trust their judgement.

A year out of office, Alistair Darling backs Gordon Brown's rival for head of the IMF

Matthew Barrett
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The merits of current French finance minister Christine Lagarde for the position of head of the International Monetary Fund have been discussed elsewhere by others more au fait with macroeconomic matters than I. But what is politically significant is Alistair Darling's support for Lagarde over a candidate from this country. Darling said of Lagarde:

"She has an easygoing manner and she gets on with people exceptionally well. I remember a meeting of Ecofin [EU finance ministers] dealing with the Greek crisis last May and it was her determination that the meeting would not end before there was an agreement, which meant there was an agreement."

Gordon Brown has so far failed to attract the support of many people in Britain. Since David Cameron ruled out backing Brown for the job, there has been a low-key Labour response of "the Tories are putting party before country". Ed Miliband said Brown is "eminently qualified" - but what else could he say? He is the leader of a party that firmly believes Brown's policies were correct.

Brown's own Chancellor, Darling, who no longer has to obey the Brownite line since stepping down from Cabinet after the election, has been free to support who he wishes. By supporting Brown's European rival Lagarde, and praising her as having qualities no-one would assign to Brown, Darling has managed to dismantle any credibility Brown's bid might have had.

Ed Miliband quietly dropped Chuka Umunna as his PPS this week for a more experienced fixer

By Jonathan Isaby
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Something which I failed to note during the week was a mini-reshuffle of the Labour front bench.

Ochil and South Perthshire Labour MP, Gordon Banks, resigned as a shadow business minister to "concentrate on his constituency" (for which read "try and see off the SNP threat in his constituency").

His replacement on the BIS team is none other than the fabled "British Obama" of Labour's 2010 intake, Chuka Umunna (pictured, left), after notching up just seven months working as PPS to Ed Miliband.

At this stage in a parliamentary career, I would suggest that being PPS to the Opposition Leader is more prestigious than being a very junior frontbench spokesman, so I wonder if Umunna was deemed not to be cutting the mustard for Miliband.

His replacement as Miliband's PPS certainly has years of experience as behind-the-scenes fixer: Michael Dugher (pictured, right) is, like Miliband, a South Yorkshire MP and has worked both as a ministerial special adviser and at the Unite union, not to mention a spell as chief spokesman for one Gordon Brown...