It’s reshuffle time!
Blunkett’s gone, and I don’t know whether to be happy or sad. I don’t like Tory-led witch-hunts aimed to undermine Labour governments and force ministerial resignations; I also don’t like Blairite ministers who penalise (successively) students, asylum seekers and then try it on with disabled people.
But he’s gone, so there’s a vacancy, which means it’s time for reshuffle ping-pong. Note, this isn’t a) fantasy reshuffle, so you don’t get to put the very dead Clem Attlee in your cabinet, nor does your mate get to run the Treasury, unless she’s already in contention by having been elected; b) this isn’t “likely” reshuffle - unless your gossip is very very juicy and you’re very very insidery - so don’t post boring assessments of Darling vs. Johnson, no-one’s interested.
No, reshuffle ping-pong is about making the best use of the very (very) limited talent in the PLP to create a Cabinet that is halfway acceptable to those of us proper Labour types hanging on in there (oh, and Ruth Kelly, thanks for the extra kick out the door provided by the schools white paper last week, by the way. Just you carry on thinking about those 33 London boroughs and don’t worry about our kids in the rest of the country, no).
So, who do I want out? Well, Hoon (obviously), Jowell (too bloody Blairite, no spark and a pathetic minister for women), Kelly (pro-life) and Straw (just cos) would be who I’d want to leave first. Actually, no, I want TB to go most of all, but unfortunately there’s no possibility of him going to keep Davy boy company in the cold. Oh, and sub-cabinet, why is Adonis still hanging around?
Promotions: Hillary Benn is great, but I can’t decide whether to leave him where he is, doing good, or promote him to a position where he may disappoint me. Hazel Blears deserves promotion, as do David Milliband and Jacqui Smith. Why is Vera Baird not a minister? And put Harriet Harman back in the cabinet please.
These are not necessarily political judgements; it’s not clear to me how one goes about establishing what individual MPs or ministers think about any particular issue, so these are based more on my impressions of them and their emphases when I’ve seen them speak and in how they come across in reporting. Commenters may wish to disagree with me, perhaps vehemently: feel free, but play nice.
“I don’t know whether to be happy or sad.”
Be happy; Blunkett’s awful.
But — what do you like about Hazel Blears? She seems to me to be borderline unspeakable. I know she’s got one of those Home Office jobs where she has to be on TV saying gruesome things about kicking people out of the country and locking them up for long periods of time, but she seems to do it with more relish than most. I can’t stand her.
I don’t like Tory-led witch-hunts aimed to undermine Labour governments and force ministerial resignations;
So a minister who makes a big mistake in office should stay?
And did you condemn the witch-hunts against Conservative ministers for their personal lives?
God, I concur entirely with Chris about Hazel Blears. Worst minister, bar none. And I mean worse than Hoon (shudders). A more patronising Blairite cretin I cannot imagine.
Matt
I heard Hazel Blears speak at a meeting about social justice for all, and both Rick and I thought she was much better than Ed Balls (who was smug and not very interested in the principle of social justice for all). She seemed to know what she was talking about and have some intelligent things to say. Which was rather a surprise.
Take care
Dan xxx
Hazel Blears is a great minister who has been given all the hardest legislation and policy to sale to the public.
In My Cabinet I would agree that Blair would have to remain as leader, until he has been in office longer than Thatcher. And I would leave Gordon where he is. I would move Benn to Education and Doug Alexander into Straw’s place. I would leave Beckett where she is and swap Hewit and Miliband around. Hoon I keep because I think the way he acts is funny, and he is good and criticising Tories). I would then replace Clarke with Blears moving Clarke somewhere else.
I would drop Kelly (she didn’t implement Tomlinson which we should have done), Hain (he has been annoying me recently), Jowell, Reid and Prescott (he criticised the Education Bill, which is up to him, but he then started complaining (or so I read over the weekend) that Cabinet members were not being co-operative. I know he is popular but that is just hypocritical.)
Hello all,
I heard Hazel Blears speak a few years ago about ending inequality: I turned up at the meeting expecting to dislike her immensely and was very impressed by her. I also like her because she has a sense of authenticity that many Labour ministers seem to lack - she’s very rooted in her Salford constituency. I also heard her at a Groundwork fringe on anti-social behaviour at this year’s Labour conference; I think the work that’s not emphasised, that’s going on behind the scenes in terms of early intervention is great. Of course I wish we would emphasise that type of work more, instead of the punitive side, but hey.
I would agree that Blair would have to remain as leader
Erm, I don’t think that’s Antonia’s primary goal…
I realise that keeping Blair as PM isn’t a primary goal of Antonia’s. I was agreeing that:
“there’s no possibility of him going to keep Davy boy company in the cold”
Now is not the time for Blair to step down, I think that he should do eventually; but only when the party has some sense of where it is going after Blair, and I do not think that we are at that point yet. And so until then we need to keep him where he is. Some members would like him out now, others want him in another 4 years (and some want him to stay longer). He has done a lot of good for the party and has actually taken the criticism away from the party on to his own shoulders. When he does go, that will mostly go with him. But I do not want him to go until the Party is organised to cope with his departure: which needs to be before the next general election.
Ah, ok!
I don’t agree, Lee. I want him to go now. We have coped with leadership elections in less than ideal circumstances before, we can do so again. And his continued leadership is taking a huge toll on activists. Unfortunately, though, I don’t think he’s going now - it looks like he’s going to make us all suffer a few more years.
The question (apart from the sheer awfulness of Blair) is whether we can afford all the good people who will lose elections because they’re associated with him. I don’t think we can.
I think it was a mistake for Blair to say he wasn’t going to step down until 2008 as it has led to increased pressure for him to leave, and increased speculation about his ability as Prime Minister. There are things he has done whilst in government which I agree with and things which he has done which I do not agree with.
I accept your point, Antonia, that his leadership is affecting activists, but how much can be attributed to him I am not certain. I think a lot of the criticism that has been directed at the government has been stuck to him, and this has been going on for so long that the media now attach all criticism to him and not the party. This is what, in my opinion, is having the effect on activists, because they no longer feel comfortable having a leader so heavily criticised, especially a leader for who it has become fashionable to criticise. I do not want to ignore ideological differences, but I do not think that they affect activists as much as the criticism; otherwise many people would have left the party sooner.
When he leaves the criticism will go with him. But when he goes there is still going to be a left and centre-left split in the party and what is needed is a leader capable of reaching out to both sides. Otherwise we will end up as disorganised as all other political parties. I do not think that people will come running back to use once he has left. There are days I wish he would step down sooner rather than later but I would rather see a strong, organised party ready to continue once he leaves, as that is what will bring people back.
“Now is not the time for Blair to step down.”
No. Now is precisely the time for Blair to step down, in order to avoid a massacre of Labour councillors in next year’s local elections.
Personally, I think it’s the job of the Tories to attack the government, and if they know it or not, they are strengthening the leftwing position. They’re saying that New Labour’s not working. We think that too. Just for different reasons.
In my slightly divisive (i suppose) eyes, its one down, god knows how many to go. As Tony Benn said in yesterday’s guardian: It’s not just Blair’s fault. It’s the entire contingent of loyalists who are creating the problem. It’s down to us blameless ones (ah: the moral high ground! :p) to reclaim
As more is uncovered about Iraq by Special Counsel Patrick Fitzgerald in the US Tony Blair’s position will become untenable.
That’ll invalidate the case for toppling Saddam, will it?
In North Korea they really do have WMD so will you be signing up for an invasion?
Don’t you think there’d be a pretty strong moral case for doing everything we practically can to get regime change?
Yes by working through the United Nations.
Of course.
Though not doing so wouldn’t affect the morality of the case, just the legitimacy of the action. There’s also the question of the legitimacy of the current inaction to deal with.
I agree entirely with the suggestion of moving Hilary Benn to Education. Back in the days when I still had political aspirations, Hilary beat me and two others for the Leeds Central selection… and more importantly did it in such a well-mannered, packed-with-integrity kind of way. I then worked with him for some years as a Leeds City Councillor, and I was consistently impressed.
Kelly on the other hand - well I’m very proud that Leeds Town Hall has a plaque for our International Brigade veterans, and Opus Dei are the lineal descendants of those on the wrong side in that conflict. Membership or taking instruction from such an evil organisation is incompatible with being in a democratic party, let alone a Democratic Socialist one. We quite rightly kicked out Trots and Galloway, what about the dupes of Escriva?
Oh dear! Still fighting the old battles. A lot of people seem to want to turn the Labour Party back into an extremist movement as it was in the 1980s when it had no realistic chance of winning an election and alienated huge swathes of people that had traditionally been loyal to it. David Cameron must be rubbing his hands with glee.
John Erskine you need to get your facts right about Opus Dei. The Spanish Civil War was a brutal conflict with atrocities on all sides and which one side had to win eventually - it was Franco that won. Opus Dei were virtually insignificant at the time of the war but it’s true that in the post-War years they did gradually reach powerful political levels.
In fact most students of Spanish 20th Century history will know that it was the Opus Dei members of Franco’s last government that paved the way for Spain’s bloodless transition to democracy and membership of the EU in the face of opposition from more Conservative elements of the regime (Opus Dei were the most progressive faction in what was admittedly an unpleasant regime although whether it was worse than a Communist one would have been if the other lot had won is a question we will never know the answer to).
Just in case you were wondering - no I am not a member or a particular sympathiser, by the way.
Your logic that Ruth Kelly should somehow be blamed for something that happened 70 years ago in another country baffles me. I suppose it means anyone who is socialist should be barred from office because of the many millions of deaths caused by that belief system in other European countries. Does Leeds Town Hall have memorials to them?
As for Antonia wanting to bar her for pro-life views well the reason many people join Labour is because they see it as an egalitarian party - maybe they think that the natural position for a party that aspires to be egalitarian would be to be pro-life as it’s the pro-life movement that defends the right of every child to exist, regardless of their race, social circumstances, gender or any disability they may carry.
Like I said you can turn Labour into a fanatical sect again as it was in the 1980s when we desperately needed an alternative government. Just don’t expect to win any elections if you do.