Uncut has learned, from authoritative sources, that Alan Johnson will resign as shadow chancellor tonight. He will be replaced by Ed Balls.
Johnson, a former trade union leader and home secretary, was neither comfortable nor successful in the role. Dissatisfaction with his performance in the key economic brief had built in recent weeks.
In the end, Johnson has pre-empted any further adverse criticism by tendering his resignation and stepping down from the front bench.
Balls, education secretary in Gordon Brown’s government, was chief economic adviser to the treasury – a post normally held by a top civil servant – during Brown’s years as chancellor.
Pugnacious and relentless, he has taken to opposition better than any other shadow minister.
Miliband declined to appoint Balls shadow chancellor when first constructing his shadow cabinet in the autumn. Balls was neither liked nor trusted by his leader, to whom he was felt to present a threat.
This appointment is believed to signal a new accommodation between the two men.
With Balls shadowing the treasury and the more “user-friendly” Miliband in the top job, Labour is strengthened.
He is likely to be replaced as shadow home secretary by his wife, the shadow foreign secretary, Yvette Cooper. She in turn will need to be replaced in a consequent reshuffle.
Tags: Alan Johnson, Ed Balls, shadow chancellor
What ever next?The electorate give Labour less than 30 percent of the vote,the failed leader who was never elected in the first place vanishes into thin air,a new leader arrives without the support of either a majority of MPs or the membership,he appoints a Shadow Chancellor who struggles with the rate of NI,he resigns for no apparent reason, only to be replaced by the henchman of the failed leader that got the country into the present mess in the first place.We still have a blank piece of paper in policy terms,now we have a reshuffle of the team that was rejected in May,2010,minus the non exec at Sunderland FC.Can we have some serious,responsible politics please?
Um… It was personal reasons, not political ones which made him resign!
Get it right!
Seems a Police officer is involved , but hell if Johnson was that good he know the NI rate for god sake.
As for Balls he was the player who kept Brown at the top job, so I’d not say Labour are better, just closer to becoming Newer labour