Yesterday, the Coalition and the Labour Party both reshuffled their frontbench teams. To date, the Prime Minister has adopted the wise strategy of avoiding frequent reshuffles, but that policy appears to have slipped: we already know that Tory Cabinet ministers will be subjected to a bigger reshuffle come the spring: yesterday’s movement of junior ministers was a means of preparing some select loyalists for ‘High Office’. By contrast, Labour’s shadow cabinet has a markedly different complexion compared to 24 hours ago.
There are approximately 25 Cabinet posts and a further 75 junior ministers. This means that approximately one third of the governing party(ies)’ MPs in Parliament are awarded a ministerial post (and one quarter of the Opposition will shadow them). In that case, how can it be that the Prime Minister feels that there are too few women and northern MPs (both groups woefully underrepresented in the Government) on his party’s frontbench to promote to his Cabinet? The leadership is almost openly saying that it wants to look less universally white, ageing, male and southern, and yet it has so few junior ministers of counterbalancing groups that it can’t even appoint a few token women Cabinet ministers in one go! That’s a telling sign of the state of the parliamentary Conservative party.
Not that the Opposition is perfect either: women make up 40% of the shadow cabinet and continue to be a minority in the Parliamentary Labour Party. Anything short of a true gender balance (and that does cut both ways: I’d disapprove of men being underrepresented too) is imperfect.
That said, I do broadly approve of the changes Miliband has made to his shadow cabinet. Liam Byrne (former post: welfare), Stephen Twigg (education) and Jim Murphy (defence) have all been moved to less influential positions, which has led to media squealing about a “purge of the Blairites”. Though the changes do mark a shift to the left within Labour, I wouldn’t run away with the idea that this was Miliband’s only objective. For example, the installation of the relatively unknown Vernon Coaker in Defence is a means by which Labour can change its policy on the Trident nuclear weapons system without the pro-Trident Jim Murphy causing trouble (nobody knows what the change will be, but I gather it’s important). Similarly, a new Transport spokesperson will facilitate a U-turn on the High Speed Two rail project.
But the most important change is the appointment of Rachael Reeves to Work and Pensions. She will make a good opponent to Iain Duncan Smith: at last, Labour has a spokesperson who will apply real Labour values to the issues facing the welfare state and the employment market, rather than shaping policy on what the Daily Mail will accept. In summary, Miliband has shown a bit of leftwing steel just at the right time, and should benefit from a united frontbench centred on the soft left ideology he has come to symbolise.
Let us briefly return to the Conservatives. We can expect a much larger and more exciting reshuffle in the Spring, in a clear departure from Cameron’s good policy of not unrooting ministers every year or so. That is unfortunate, because government benefits when its day-to-day leaders are in posts for long enough to implement a coherent programme which they are responsible for and able to follow through on. That Cameron feels unable to do this is simply a cost of his government’s lack of windowdressing diversity. Not to worry, though. The Party will eventually modernise. In thirty or forty years.
