In a resounding victory, Yvette Cooper’s Commons slap-down of Louise Mensch was Uncut readers’ choice for June’s shadow cabinet goal of the month. With 38% of the vote, Cooper was more than 17% ahead of Andy Burnham in second place who secured 21% of the vote.
Ed Balls was third with 18%, Tessa Jowell was fourth on 16% and Mary Creagh fifth on 8%.
Over the past year, Yvette Cooper has quietly established herself as one of the shadow cabinet’s true big beasts.
She has featured in two of the three goal of the month competitions so far, and has successfully defined the government as slashing frontline police services.
Readers pick from Alexander, Balls, Burnham, Denham and Healey for May’s title
In a month of electoral clouds for Labour and deeper questions about the party’s overall gameplan, there were still moments of hope from the shadow cabinet.
Each of this month’s contenders for readers’ goal of the month is from action in the chamber. They are, in alphabetical order, Douglas Alexander, Ed Balls, Andy Burnham, John Denham and John Healey.
1. Alexander lays a trap
Sometimes it isn’t the bravura performance or the cheers of the crowd that make a performance notable.
It’s the content that counts.
Douglas Alexander doesn’t particularly skewer or embarrass William Hague in this clip. This wasn’t the Commons as a bear-pit. Instead, he uses the chamber for the most important function of all – holding the government to account on matters of war and peace.
Since the start of the Libya intervention, the absence of any sort of strategy has been painfully obvious. Alexander’s questions are ticking timebombs. William Hague flannels through his responses, but there’s only so long he can do this.
And judging by his tone and body language at the despatch box, he knows it.
A couple more of these exercises in foreign office evasion from Hague and he will find them edited together into packages constantly replayed on the news to illustrate the government’s obfuscation on their drifting mission.
With these questions, Alexander teed up Hague for the first part of the package.
A few years ago, the newsreader Martyn Lewis made a plea for more positivity in the news. His Jerry Maguire moment was greeted as, well, Jerry Maguire’s was.
For Lewis, there wasn’t a redemptive ending; he wasn’t vindicated and every time he read the news subsequently, you couldn’t help but think he was a bit odd.
But somewhere in what he was saying, was a grain of something. Not quite common sense, because clearly no one is going to be interested in news that reports everything is just fine. But in his own slightly pompous and mistaken way, he was articulating a desire that most of us have for some light to provide a bit of contrast to the constant shade.
Politics is a dark place at the moment. The coverage reflects this. The sun isn’t shining for Labour and things are far from how they should be. But there are flashes of light. And it’s as important to recognise these as the mistakes which deepen the gloom. Otherwise there’s no basis for hope and no route back from opposition to power. (more…)
