Thursday, June 28, 2007

So was there a deal?

The first thing to say about Gordon Brown's Cabinet Reshuffle is that at least it went smoothly. If this were a Tony Blair production, he would by now have either accidentally abolished the Scottish Office or allowed some middle-ranking Cabinet member to throw a strop that threatened to derail every other appointment.

It also, by and large, has the merit of placing round pegs in round holes. Some of Mr Blair's appointments - Margaret Beckett to the Foreign Office, John Reid to health - often seemed more counter-intuitive than logical.

On the plus side, it is good to see John Denham at the top table, and I am personally pleased that both Ruth Kelly and Peter Hain have survived. A lot of the opposition to Ruth seems based around the fact that she is a Christian, while a lot of the animus against Peter seems to be about the fact that he has a suntan. They are both good people.

Against that, I am disappointed and somewhat baffled to see Stephen Timms go - only a few months after he was talked about as a possible Chancellor - while it beggars belief that the bright, articulate and photogenic Yvette Cooper has missed out yet again on full Cabinet promotion.

But if I had to give an overall impression, it would be that while this is potentially a very strong team, I think Brown may have sacrificed slightly too much experience in his determination to present this as a "new government."

The key word there is "potentially." There are some newly-promoted men and women here who could turn out to be significant political figures, but it has to be said that some of them are currently only household names in their own households.

For starters, I am not at all convinced by Alistair Darling as Chancellor. For me, the best Chancellors were the ones who were strong political personalities in their own right - Roy Jenkins, Nigel Lawson, Ken Clarke, Brown himself.

By contrast the weakest Chancellors have historically been those who, like Darling, lacked an independent power base from that of the Prime Minister - Anthony Barber and Norman Lamont spring to mind.

Likewise, I am not convinced by Jacqui Smith as Home Secretary. She appears to owe her promotion partly to the fact that she is a woman and partly to having successfully poured oil on Labour's troubled waters at the height of last September's "coup."

But she has no experience either of the Home Office or of running a department and with Denham, Hazel Blears and Hilary Benn all having previously served as Ministers of State in the Home Office, she scarcely seemed the most logical choice for that demanding role.

The senior appointment that makes the most sense to me is that of David Miliband as Foreign Secretary. For all his supposed nerdiness, the South Shields MP is a very charming man and has exactly the sort of personal skills that will serve him well at the FCO.

Much is being made of the fact that he is the youngest Foreign Secretary since David Owen but that comparison ends there. Miliband will be nothing like the abrasive young doctor who, in the words of Denis Healey, poisoned everything around him.

Miliband's appointment is also the most fascinating in terms of Labour's internal politics, and will inevitably give rise to speculation of a "deal" under which he agreed to allow Brown a free run at the leadership in return for a major office of state.

Well, if there was such a deal, I think it was probably between Brown and Tony Blair, that Brown received the outgoing leader's endorsement in return for a pledge not to cull his supporters.

The collateral damage in all this was Margaret Beckett, who never really got on with Blair and was always very close to Brown. Yet in the end it was Blair who made her Foreign Secretary, and Brown who sacked her.

Politics? It's a funny old game.

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At last, a Minister for the North

I thought Nick Brown would get his old job of Chief Whip back in today's reshuffle. It would have been no less than he deserved for his years of loyalty to Gordon Brown and also for his less-than-gracious treatment at the hands of Tony Blair when he was made the scapegoat for the foot-and-mouth debacle in 2001 and then sacked from the government by phone the following year.

As it turns out, he has been appointed Deputy Chief Whip with a separate brief as Minister for the North, one of a series of ministers for the English regions appointed today. No doubt this will be like red rag to a bull to the conspiracy theorists who think regions are a sinister EU plot to break up the UK, but there has long been a Minister for London and the appointment of dedicated champions for other less favoured parts of the country is long overdue.

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Not a bad guess

It seems I've not done badly with my predictions of the shape of Gordon Brown's Cabinet made last Sunday. Of the four major jobs (Chancellor, Foreign, Home, Justice) I managed to get three right, with only Jacqui Smith's appointment as Home Secrertary taking me (and everyone else) by surprise.

I'll give my assessment of the new line-up later, but here is the full list. What I predicted is in black. Where wrong, I have struck out my own predictions and inserted Gordon's actual choices in red.

Prime Minister: Gordon Brown
Lord Chancellor and Minister of Justice: Jack Straw
Foreign Secretary: David Miliband
Chancellor of the Exchequer: Alistair Darling
Home Secretary: Alan Johnson Jacqui Smith
Leader of the House of Commons: Margaret Beckett Harriet Harman
Children, Schools and Families Secretary: Ed Balls
Innovations, Universities and Skills Secretary: John Denham
Health Secretary: Yvette Cooper Alan Johnson
Environment Secretary: Hilary Benn
Business and Enterprise Secretary: Stephen Timms John Hutton
Transport Secretary (and Election co-ordinator): Douglas Alexander Ruth Kelly
Defence and Scottish Secretary: John Hutton Des Browne
Work, Pensions and Welsh Secretary: John Denham Peter Hain
Local Government and Communities Secretary: Hazel Blears
Culture Secretary: James Purnell
Northern Ireland Secretary: Shaun Woodward
Leader of the House of Lords: Baroness Scotland Baroness Ashton
Minister for the Cabinet Office: Ed Miliband
International Development Secretary: Andy Burnham Douglas Alexander
Chief Secretary to the Treasury: Ed Balls Andy Burnham
Chief Whip: Nick Brown Geoff Hoon

The following are leaving the Cabinet: Tony Blair, John Prescott, John Reid, Margaret Beckett, Patricia Hewitt, Lord Falconer, Tessa Jowell, Baroness Amos, Hilary Armstrong, and Stephen Timms.

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Wednesday, June 27, 2007

Dull, uninspiring - or just plain honest?

Margaret Thatcher quoted St Francis of Assisi and promised "where there is discord, may we bring harmony," before going on to run a government that left the country bitterly divided between those who caught the 1980s zeitgeist and got rich on privatisation and financial deregulation, and those, like the Durham miners and the Sheffield steelworkers, whose jobs were deemed surplus to requirements in the modern service economy.

John Major promised a "classless society" and "a nation at ease with itself," noble aspirations maybe but well beyond his power to deliver, eventually leaving six and a half years later with the country in a state of deep ennui and as class-ridden as ever.

Tony Blair said "we were elected as New Labour, we will govern as New Labour," before proceding to govern for ten years like an Old Tory, defining his premiership in opposition to the views of his own party to the extent that, though it might have been new, it ceased to be Labour in any meaningful sense.

Today, Gordon Brown simply said he would "try his utmost," and get on with the work of bringing about change. No, it's not the kind of political leadership we're used to in this country. But after the disingenuity, false hopes and vacuousness that has gone before, it's the kind we desperately need.

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Labour comes home at last

"I have just accepted the invitation of Her Majesty the Queen to form a government. This will be a new government with new priorities."

For the first time since 1979, we have a real Labour Prime Minister. And for the first time in my adult life - I was 16 when Sunny Jim lost power - we have a Prime Minister who I could actually conceive of voting for.

Rejoice, Rejoice!

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Don't judge a Big Red Book by its cover

The latest edition of the Big Red Book of New Labour Sleaze is published tomorrow. I was pleased to have played a part in the original version and to have been asked to contribute a further piece to this new edition.

I am, however, somewhat disappointed by the decision of the publishers to feature a picture of Gordon Brown with his trousers down on the cover, especially in view of the timing of the publication to coincide with the start of his premiership.

New Labour Sleaze was the result of the amoral approach to politics adopted by Tony Blair, Peter Mandelson, Alastair Campbell and a few others. To attempt to tar Gordon with the same brush is not just grotesquely unfair, but disingenuous.

I think that over the next few weeks and months the public will begin to realise that far from being part of the sleazy old gang, the incoming Prime Minister is a very different kettle of fish from his discredited predecessor.

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