Posts Tagged ‘Shadow Cabinet’
Shadow cabinet: vote for John
30/09/2010, 06:08:55 PMWe must look beyond London for the shadow cabinet, says Jamie Reed
30/09/2010, 03:39:01 PMAs the Parliamentary Labour party elects the new shadow cabinet, Ed Miliband has some difficult choices to make. An overly crowded field will probably deliver some surprises, but Labour’s big guns deserve to be given the chance to take on the government, build their shadow teams and prosecute Labour’s cause.
Ed Balls and Andy Burnham have strong claims to whichever briefs they would most like as former leadership contenders. Alan Johnson remains one of the party’s best assets. Yvette Cooper is a formidable and essential component of Labour’s future. Peter Hain and Shaun Woodward remain popular, well known in the country, experienced and heavyweight. The shadow cabinet would be poorer without them.
49 candidates is too many, but there is some real quality on the slate. John Healey and Vernon Coaker are ‘must-haves’: strong intellects with good communication skills. Stephen Timms, Ivan Lewis and Iain Wright have a great deal to offer and despite his alter ego as an internet celebrity, Tom Harris has a unique understanding of some of the dragons progressive politics must confront. (more…)
Conference diary III: per non cambiare nulla…
28/09/2010, 11:18:12 AMAs ancient as Rome, as implacable as Sicily, is Lampedusa’s iron law of politics: “bisogna cambiare tutto per non cambiare nulla (everything must change, so that nothing changes) ”.
And so it was last night for two staffers overheard in the Midland bar:
“You’ll never guess who’s doing the Sue Nye job, this week at least”?
“No. Who”?
“Go on, guess”.
“I don’t know. Who?”
“Sue Nye”.
“Of course. Should have known.”
(Sue Nye has worked for Labour leaders since Callaghan. She was gatekeeper to Neil Kinnock and then to Gordon Brown from before the treasury till the last days in Downing Street. She is married to Gavyn Davies, the Goldman Sachs partner who also chaired the BBC).
Other at least interim team Ed Miliband staffers include Jonathan Ashworth (Brown, Harman), Rachel Kinnock (Blair, Brown, Team EM) and Anna Yearley (PLP, Brown, Team EM).
* * * (more…)
Shadow cabinet: team Lammy wants your vote
24/09/2010, 09:09:34 PM——————————————-
Sent: Friday, September 24, 2010 6:21:51 PMDear colleagues,
As a broad group of MPs from across the party, we will all be voting for David Lammy as one of our 19 choices for the Shadow Cabinet elections. We believe that he would be an asset to our party in the Shadow Cabinet and we urge colleagues to lend David one of their votes.Regards,
Karen Buck
Gerald Kaufman
Frank Dobson
Dennis Skinner
Gisela Stuart
Natascha Engel
Chuka Umunna
Pamela Nash