Groundhog Day. Forgive me if I’m mistaken, but hasn’t Labour just gone through a ruinous and utterly unnecessary leadership contest that saw the party leader reconfirmed in his position? Please tell me the spectacle of sundry MPs appearing on Sunday politics television playing the unity card and positioning themselves as the paragons of such wasn’t a half-remembered dream from a fortnight ago? I feel moved to ask these questions, because since Jeremy Corbyn began his shadow cabinet reshuffle, the bellyaching and briefing are back. Continue reading
Tagged with Shadow Cabinet
Corbyn makes changes to Shadow Cabinet
Yesterday Jeremy Corbyn made some changes to his Shadow Cabinet, although most of the top positions remained unchanged. Here’s a run down of the decisions so far: Continue reading
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Jeremy Corbyn, women, and the shadow cabinet
I know the so-called women’s pages in the Telegraph aren’t meant for incisive political comment, but Cathy Newman’s piece on Jeremy’s will-he won’t-he reshuffle is a strong contender for idiocy of the year. And we’re only on 2016’s second day. It has it all: bad faith, banalities masquerading as analysis, omissions of fact. It’s awful.
Cathy sets out a thought experiment. What if Jeremy Corbyn chooses to stuff his shadow cabinet full of women? What indeed. The shadow chancellorship should go to Angela Eagle, the foreign office to Yvette Cooper, to Liz Kendall social security or health, promotions for Gloria de Piero and Sarah Champion, and jobs found for Rachel Reeves, Emma Reynolds, Naz Shah, Stella Creasy, and Jess Phillips. She rounds off by noting that “the Labour leader has no excuse as he ponders his next move. If he cares about promoting women, there is no shortage of talent. Now he needs to tap it.” Continue reading
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On the much heralded shadow cabinet reshuffle
I wanted to hold off commenting about “real” events until after the New Year. Even monomaniacal bloggers deserve a break. But there’s just been so much nonsense and idiocy swilling around Jeremy Corbyn’s will-he/won’t-he reshuffle that I feel compelled to say a few words myself. I mean it’s not as if the government have totally screwed up on the northern floods and Labour ought to be seizing this moment to knock lumps out of them for their mismanagement or anything.
First thing first, I’ve suggested previously that MPs would do better not to whine and moan about their predicament because they will find scant sympathy in the party. So what happens? We have a (unnamed, of course) shadow minister accusing Jeremy of ruining Christmas with all this talk of demoting and reshuffling. Diddums. Then we have people saying that Jeremy can’t possibly demote people on the basis of the Syria free vote because it was free, innit. Then we have people saying they will resign if so-and-so goes. Continue reading
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Harman pre-empts return to shadow cabinet elections by announcing reshuffle
Harriet Harman has this morning announced a new Shadow Cabinet team before the first meeting of the new parliamentary party due this evening.
She is, of course, entitled to do so according to the rules of the parliamentary party. These were amended four years ago at the request of the then leader, Ed Miliband, to abolish shadow cabinet elections which had long taken place annually when the party was in opposition – a move which the same MPs had rejected only a year earlier. Continue reading
