Part Two – Beyond the Big Beasts (To read Part I – Two Big Surprises – published yesterday, please click here).
Lynne Featherstone has clearly earned a promotion to shadow Ed Balls at the Department of Communities and Local Government, with her work around the ‘Baby P’ case. And David Laws would better suit a move to Energy and Climate Change, where he could make a good case for the economics of our green policies and be an effective opponent of Ed Miliband, thought by many to be the more talented Miliband brother and certainly someone to be taken seriously.
My final choices are where I will most likely lose those of you who have managed to read this far… but hear me out! It is stating the obvious to say that our front bench is extremely white, our representation of minorities is abysmal and there is little we can do about that until the next election, outside of appointments to the Lords. The Conservatives have tried to beat the perceptions of them by appointing Baroness Warsi to a high profile position. We have done little or nothing.
For this I don’t have a complete answer and a reshuffle can only be a tiny part of the solution. We have a potentially effective spokesperson for DCLG in the Lords in Baroness Falkner. Julia Goldsworthy has never seemed entirely comfortable in her role shadowing Hazel Blears, and Nick could do worse than promoting Baroness Falkner in the Lords: she is extremely intelligent and capable (although she may need some media training – she has had a tendency to stumble in some of her Lords’ debates). It would create some challenges in holding Hazel Blears to account in Parliament but those are not insurmountable.
Julia did well in her role as Shadow Chief Secretary to the Treasury and would again be a good deputy for Vince if she were to return there. Jeremy Browne could move to Defence, where Nick Harvey has done little of note. Putting someone so close to Nick Clegg’s inner circle in this position would send a signal that we are taking defence policy seriously, particularly our policy on the Gurkhas, which straddles defence and the home office. Our withdrawal from Iraq, and the change in policy on Afghanistan coming from Obama, will be important times for the Liberal Democrats to remind the public of our good judgement over this issue. Not to mention the continuing issue of the under-resourcing and over-deployment of our troops under this Government.
There are obviously quite a few glaring omissions here. The Work and Pensions brief will become more important over the next year with the expected increases in unemployment but I haven’t made any suggestions for that. Will Jenny Willott be the best person for the job? Do we need a change at Transport, or is Norman Baker doing a great job as it is? I think Chris Huhne is doing well in his current position at Home Affairs, and there isn’t any real need to move him, but some of you might think otherwise. I also haven’t said what would happen to John Thurso and his award-winning beard.
I hope you can understand some of my reasoning here and if nothing else I hope I’ve started a discussion for what could be some extremely important choices in the run up to the next election. In case you missed them here are my proposed appointments in full:
Shadow Secretary of State for Business and Public Sector Reform (BERR)
Lord Ashdown
Shadow Secretary of State for Innovation, Universities and Skills
Charles Kennedy
Shadow Secretary of State for Children, Schools and Families
Lynne Featherstone
Shadow Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change
David Laws
Shadow Secretary of State for the Department of Communities and Local Government
Baroness FalknerShadow Chief Secretary to the Treasury
Julia Goldsworthy
Shadow Secretary of State for Defence
Jeremy Browne
* Letterman is a regular commenter on LDV. He is a politically-restricted party member (hence the pseudonym). You can read Part I of his January reshuffle opinion – Two Big Surprises – by clicking here.