The shadow cabinet selections certainly wrong-footed the experts. I suspect they wrong-footed most non-experts too, like me. However, I like very much Ed’s new model army, as a surprising but very astute decisive outcome. But yes – like Jack Straw – we all know the system is ‘barking mad’.
The appointment of the Shadow Chancellor of the Exchequer? as Alan Johnson is a very revealing one. Alan is a man of enormous political calibre, who has dealt with a diverse range of political departments in the past (including the Treasury where he indeed worked very briefly). He has come face-to-face to a large number of budgets, so handling the country’s budget will be no problem. Of course, Alan Johnson can’t pretend to know as much about economics as Yvette Cooper and Ed Balls, who were the favourites to get the Shadow Chancellor job, but I am very much hoping as a member of the Labour Party (and Fabians and Progress) that they work closely with Alan and Ed. Our most important imminent challenge is of course the comprehensive spending review on 21st October 2010. Some commentators, such as Kevin Maguire, Deputy Editor of the Mirror and contributor to the New Statesman, have queried whether this is because Ed Miliband has temerity in challenging the cuts. The overwhelming evidence, from Ireland and Japan inter alia, appears to support the notion that such drastic cuts could be very damaging to the health of the economy. However, the argument to control the budget deficit (and interest payments thereof) cannot be underestimated. The risk of depression is still very much a real one, and Alan Johnson will need to use his immense political skills to win the political and social arguments that lives are affected. As the Labour think-tanks, and the Liberal Democrats (strange bed fellows?) have warned, there is a possibility that the cuts agenda could work, and therefore Labour should consider very carefully its stance on this, especially bearing in mind an apparent stalemate of acceptance of socialism in the rest of Europe, as Claire French has recently reported on for Progress.
I am certain, notwithstanding, that Ed Balls will make a pugnacious Shadow Secretary of State for the Home Department?, and that Sadiq Khan will make a superb Shadow Lord Chancellor, Secretary of State for Justice (with responsibility for political and constitutional reform)?. I personally have been a huge fan of Sadiq, despite the massage chair debacle, and I think that, as a Muslim MP, he is somebody that people can genuinely aspire to being. He has an incredibly formidable intellect, which I must admit to having underestimated, but which I witnessed with my own eyes in Manchester last month. Likewise, John Denham will be a tour de force as the Shadow Secretary of State for Business, Innovation and Skills, as he combines intense political knowledge with hard pragmatism of politics, which appears to have resulted, from what I can see, from having taken his constituency work extremely seriously.? He also has been very helpful in advancing debate in the Fabian Society.
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There are relative unknowns such as John Healey??, the Shadow Secretary of State for Health?. I understand that he has business and economics experience, which is going to be highly relevant as Andrew Lansley brings his complicated (and emotive) arguments concerning NHS restructuring to the table. I sincerely hope that he will be more high-profile than he was in housing, but I trust the views of my senior colleagues. Finally, I am a huge fan of Andy Burnham MP. I think he was a superb Health Secretary, but as Shadow Secretary of State for Education and Election Coordinator?, he will outshine. Clearly, he was the wrong man in the wrong place at the wrong time for this particular contest, but he is a future Labour I feel, whilst we do have an election-winning candidate presently, and pigeon-holing him in Health was never going to be a good idea for his own political experience and credibility.
Dr Shibley Rahman (Labour/Compass/Fabian/Progress member)
