LABOUR PARTY leader Ed Miliband, who had the unprecedented power for a Labour Party leader to appoint his own shadow cabinet, yesterday used his authority to appoint more women and promote some recent House of Commons arrivals.
Up to this year, a Labour leader was hamstrung because places on the shadow cabinet were decided in hotly contested Labour Parliamentary Party elections, but Mr Miliband took his party by surprise in June when he announced the election’s abolition.
Predictably, rising Labour stars, Rachel Reeves and Chuka Umunna, who are both in their early thirties, will take places, with Ms Reeves, taking the shadow chief secretary to the treasury post and Mr Ummuna being put in charge of the shadow business portfolio.
Privately, there are some grumbles that Mr Miliband could have gone further to stamp a fresh face on Labour’s first team, since others in the 2010 intake, such as John Woodcock, Stella Creasy, former TV presenter Gloria de Piero and Luciana Berger were not elevated.
Mr Miliband’s job was eased by the decision of John Healey to quit the shadow cabinet entirely and that of John Denham, surprisingly, to step down from a policy role to become parliamentary private secretary to Mr Miliband.
Former schools minister under Tony Blair, Stephen Twigg has returned to the front line to become shadow education secretary, while another victor is Caroline Flint, who enjoyed promotion for a time under Gordon Brown before quitting, saying that he had treated her “like window-dressing”.
Birmingham MP Tom Watson, who has achieved a high profile in the phone-hacking campaign, has also been promoted, but he rejected Conservative demands that he should quit his place on the Commons’ culture, media and sport committee.
The committee will interrogate senior News International figures, such as James Murdoch and Rebekah Brooks in coming weeks. Usually, however, members of the shadow cabinet do not sit on parliamentary committees.
However, Mr Watson insisted that he would not stand aside because, he said, he has become deputy chairman of the party and campaign co-ordinator, rather than occupying a policy role: “The Tories can say all they like. I’m not budging,” he said.
If the phone-hacking scandal has helped one MP’s career, it has hurt another’s, since former shadow culture secretary Ivan Lewis has been moved to cover the less high-profile international development brief after he blundered during the Labour Party‘s conference.
Mr Lewis argued journalists should be state-registered and be barred from practising – just like doctors and solicitors – if struck off for malpractice, though he rapidly went into retreat following press fury and Labour embarrassment.
Meanwhile, former Northern Ireland Secretary of State Shaun Woodward has lost out, though his predecessor in Stormont, Peter Hain stays on as shadow secretary of state for Wales and chair of Labour’s national policy forum.
Eleven women will take places in the 27-strong cabinet, while it will have, at 48, the youngest average age of any shadow cabinet for decades: “If you’re good enough, you’re old enough,” said the Labour leader.
London MP Emily Thornberry, who takes over from Baroness Scotland as shadow attorney general is one of the women to gain, saying it is “great to see so many talented people coming into the team, and to see so many women”.
The decision to decide on his own first team, rather than leaving it to elections amongst MPs, was Mr Miliband’s first declaration that he was willing to challenge his own ranks, since Tony Blair at the height of his powers never dared to do the same.
However, the momentum built up by his announcement in June was not followed through into the autumn since he backed away from an attempt to reduce the trades unions’ influence on the next leadership election.
