Our own Stephen Tall has been analysing the Reshuffle over at Endeavour Public Affairs.
He says that an opportunity to pursue a more radical economic agenda has been missed:
The Government should be building on this with a radical and popular agenda to create a more competitive and much, much fairer economy, as I argued here on LibDemVoice. This would mean further banking reform than currently proposed, for example by separating completely retail and investment banking, and parcelling up and selling on the currently state-owned banks into a number of smaller ones to create greater plurality in the system. More than this, it should be looking to re-invigorate capitalism by ensuring success not failure is rewarded, with shareholders given powers genuinely to hold executives to account for their performance. Nothing in the reshuffle suggests the Coalition is gearing up for this challenge.
He talks about the relative ideological positions within both Liberal Democrats and Conservatives:
Put bluntly: the Cameron modernisation project to position his party in the political centre is dead. This reshuffle marked a definite shift to the right for the Tories. By contrast, the two newest Lib Dem ministers – Jo Swinson and Tom Brake – are squarely in the mainstream of the party, neither identified with the economically liberal ‘Orange Bookers’ nor the Social Liberal Forum.
You can read the article in full here.
* Caron Lindsay is Co-Editor of Liberal Democrat Voice and blogs at Caron's Musings