Gordon's Government

....But who will get his old job?





With Gordon Brown's accession to the Labour leadership now looking all-but-assured, guessing the shape of his first Cabinet has become one of the favourite pasttimes of political bloggers and even some serious journalists. I myself have been challenged a couple of times to name who I think will in be Gordon's line-up.

Well, I'm not only going to take up this challenge, I'm going to do a whole series of posts on it, starting today with a look at who I think will get his current job as Chancellor of the Exchequer.

Before turning to that, however, I thought I would, by way of a general introduction to the series, make some general observations about what factors I think will guide Brown in his choices.

They are: the need to be seen as a new government, the need to unite a divided party, the need to placate potential rivals, the need to ensure competence and continuity, and finally the need to reward those who have stuck by him through thick and thin.

1. A new government. Most observers now agree that the Brown accession will see a big influx of fresh talent from the younger generation, including some MPs elected as recently as 2005. I would expect at least eight members of the present Cabinet - more than a third - to leave the Government.

2. Party unity. There will, I believe, be a return to the Wilsonian style of party management. Jon Cruddas will be offered a senior role whether or not he wins the deputy leadership. Iraq War resigner John Denham will be given a Cabinet job. And some key Blairites will be kept on.

3. Placating rivals. In the same vein, Gordon will be magnanimous to those who could have emerged as potential rivals. John Reid will remain in a senior role. Charles Clarke may be offered a way back into government, though he may decline it. And then there's David Miliband....(see below)

4. Competence and continuity. I believe Gordon wants to run a government that will be noted for its quiet efficiency, with a premium on ministers who get the job done. There will be less of the putting square pegs in round holes (eg Reid to Health) that frequently happened under Blair.

5. Rewarding loyalty. There are some people who were extremely badly treated by Blair on account of their closeness to Gordon - most notably Nick Brown and Yvette Cooper. Gordon will want to repay them for the years the locusts have eaten.

So, turning to the job of Chancellor of the Exchequer, what do I think will Gordon do about his most vital appointment - that of his own successor?

Well, any assessment of this is complicated by the recent discussions about splitting the Treasury into a Ministry for Economic Affairs (also subsuming the DTI) and a Finance Ministry (a bit like the difference between a finance director and a commercial director in most companies.)

Assuming though, for the sake of argument, that the job remains intact, attention has focused primarily on two candidates.

They are Gordon's former economic adviser, now junior Treasury minister Ed Balls, and his long time ally, the Trade and Industry Secretary Alistair Darling.

Taking Balls first, I find Philip Webster convincing on this one, and not just because he goes to watch football with Balls every other Saturday.

I have long taken the view that promotion to the Chancellorship this early on in his career would be too big a leap, and according to the Political Editor of the Times, so does Gordon. Balls seems destined instead for the Chief Secretaryship, with the big promotion coming some time in the next Parliament.

So what about Alistair Darling? Well, I am going to come out against him as well, not because I think Gordon wouldn't want him as Chancellor, but because I don't think he can have him.

At a time when the Tories are seeking to make a general election issue of Brown's Scottishness, he simply cannot afford to have the two most important jobs in British politics occupied by politicians from north of the border - particularly if he also keeps John Reid at the Home Office.

That, to my mind, leaves two English candidates as the front-runners for the Treasury role.

The first of these is David Miliband. He was the only potential leadership rival that Brown ever really feared, and had he been a slightly cannier operator, I think Miliband could have played on that fear and demanded the Exchequer as his price.

But his current role as Environment Secretary has, suddenly, become a very high profile as well as a very important role in terms of helping to shape the politics of the next few years, and he may well elect to stay there.

Miliband also weakened his own negotiating position by making it clear fairly early on that he wouldn't stand for leader. In conclusion I'm not as convinced as I once was that he will end up as Chancellor, although I still think he is a very strong contender.

The other candidate is Jack Straw, the great survivor of the New Labour years. Some tip him for a return to the Foreign Office, but though this could well happen, other strong candidates for the FCO exist, notably Hilary Benn or even Peter Hain.

In contrast, there seems an absense of real heavyweight contenders for the Treasury, and I am now tending towards the view that if Brown decides to keep the department intact, Straw could well be his man, perhaps with the brief of overseeing the eventual transition to two separate departments.

But if Gordon decides to go for the Big Bang, I tip Straw to return to the Foreign Office rather than undertake either of what would both be lesser roles. In those circumstances, I would back Darling to become Economic Affairs Secretary and Miliband to take on the Finance brief.

I suspect the position will become clearer over the coming weeks as we get an idea of just how serious the proposal to split the Treasury really is.

They don't learn, do they?

You would think, wouldn't you, that with all the problems it is encountering as a result of the cash for peerages inquiry, Labour would have the good sense to end all Prime Ministerial patronage over House of Lords appointments and support a fully elected Second Chamber.

But, according to The Guardian's Patrick Wintour, apparently not.

A very un-British state of affairs

I have been struggling for anything original to say about the Government's so-called "compromise" on gay adoption, which whatever it may achieve in terms of homosexual equality represents yet another nail in the coffin of freedom of conscience in this benighted country - something which all of us, including the gay community, will pay for in due course.

The Prime Minister knew in his heart that his Communities Minister, Ruth Kelly, was right about this issue. But, battered by cash-for-honours and increasingly at the mercy of events, he lacked the authority to impose a sensible resolution, allowing the opportunistic and vote-seeking deputy leadership contenders Alan Johnson and Peter Hain to dictate events.

Much of the coverage of this issue on the blogosphere has been in the opposite direction, and it is hard to go against their views. But I came across something yesterday on a blog called For Queen and Country that sums up my thoughts on this entirely.

The author, who blogs under the name Cyberleader, makes the very wise argument that, when you have two competing sets of rights, it is better, and more British, to respect both points of view and try to muddle through than to impose one set of values over the other.

"The status quo before the Act - that gay couples could adopt from a number of agencies and that Catholic adoption agencies could turn them away - was a perfectly acceptable state of affair for all parties involved, and it seemed a common-sense way to avoid a clash of values.

"This would have been the perfectly sensible (and quite British) compromise - avoid the issue and everyone could live and let live.

"Roman Catholics didn't question the right of gays to adopt and in fact referred them to other agencies and in turn they had their rights to their beliefs in turn, which you would think would be fair enough.

"However, New Labour can't resist a bit of tinkering, and so we have another fissure point in British society, which has far deeper implications than they intended. We now have two competing sets of rights set against each other, and there can't be a return to the former status quo without one group taking great offence."

Spot on.

The Blog Questionnaire

This blog has now been running for a year and a half. It has grown into a medium-sized political blog with a thoughtful community of regular visitors which regularly gets namechecked on other, bigger blogs and in the mainstream media. By and large, I am very happy with the way things are going.

But there is always room for improvement, and over the next month I will be running this poll in my sidebar to try to find out what readers would like to see more of - whether it be more analysis, more gossip, more personal stuff or even, God forbid, more politics!

There are some interesting "strategic" issues which I want to try to address - such as whether people want to see this blog develop into more of a thorough-going political blog or whether they appreciate some of the non-political stuff that occasionally appears here.

My own view on this is that the combination of the personal and the political is one of the great strengths of blogging - as both Iain Dale and Rachel North have shown in their different ways. But I want to know your views.

One thing I would like to see more of is your comments! While the overall blog stats have grown steadily over the past few months, the number of comments has been slightly decreasing, which is odd. It could be that I'm not being controversial enough. Alternatively it could be that I am writing about things you are not interested in! Either way, I want to know.

It's a multi-choice poll so you can tick as many boxes as you like. Please also feel free to leave your observations in the comment box.

Who will stop Cruddas?

For the past four weeks I have been running a poll on this blog on Labour's Deputy Leadership election. The results are of course totally unscientific but they do suggest that I was right in my original supposition that Jon Cruddas and Hilary Benn are some way ahead of the field among ordinary Labour supporters (some of whom visit this blog!) with Alan Johnson, Peter Hain, Harriet Harman and Hazel Blears fighting it out for the minor placings.

The full results (which can also be viewed HERE if you like coloured graphs) are:

Jon Cruddas 35%
Hilary Benn 29%
Alan Johnson 6%
Peter Hain 5%
Harriet Harman 4%
Hazel Blears 3%
Jack Straw 3%
None of the above 15%

On the basis of this, and also some of what has appeared about the contest in the mainstream media and on other blogs, it is possible to draw some early conclusions about the candidates and the eventual shape of the field.

The first is that Jack Straw will not actually stand. He doesn't really need the job, and he seems to be in line for a return to the Foreign Office under Gordon, or alternatively, a surprise appointment as Chancellor. As I have pointed out previously, he could even stay in his current job and be appointed Deputy Prime Minister anyway if Cruddas wins, given that Cruddas doesn't want the DPM title.

My second preliminary conclusion, in common with UK Daily Pundit is that Hazel Blears is effectively out of the race, and that the female vote will line-up solidly behind Harriet Harman. Interestingly, Brendan Carlin in the Telegraph's new Little and Large blog also speculates that Harriet's campaign is gaining momentum.

By contrast, my third conclusion is that Peter Hain's campaign is in deep trouble. Already, Cruddas appeared to have stolen a lot of his natural support on the left. The fact that Guido has now got hold of a list of his supporters, including several paid Labour Party officials who are supposed to be neutral, has only added to the sense that this is turning into a rather ill-starred enterprise.

Finally, I conclude that while it is Cruddas rather than Hain who appears to be collaring the anti-war, anti-establishment left vote in the party, the pro-Blair, pro-war "establishment" has reached no clear consensus among itself as to the best way of stopping him. It is this that, to my mind, will now become the key question at the heart of the election.

From my poll, and also from much anecdotal evidence surrounding the campaign, it appears that the obvious answer to the question "Who will stop Cruddas?" is Hilary Benn. But some with much greater inside knowledge of the PLP than I have dispute this, and claim that it is Alan Johnson who actually has the greater support among MPs and even the unions.

So while I suspect that this battle is really boiling down to Benn v Cruddas, I'll err on the side of caution for the time being and just say that whichever of Benn or Johnson emerges ahead on the first ballot will go on to become the main challenger to Cruddas in the final run-off.

Much will then depend on what happens to Hain's support among the unions, which is still significant. Will it fall in dutifully behind the establishment candidate, or will it go to Cruddas, whose ideological position is much closer to Hain's own?

On the answer to that question, I suspect, the eventual outcome will rest.

This post was featured in Web Grab, on Daniel Finkelstein's Comment Central.

Things can only get worse

There is a fair amount of speculation on the blogosphere today as to whether Tony Blair might surprise us all and resign this week or next rather than attempting to see it through to his 10th anniversary in May. Mike Smithson on Political Betting suggests his demeanour in yesterday's Politics Show interview was that of a beaten man. Meanwhile Iain Dale quotes an interesting exchange with a TV producer who seemed to think the PM's departure was now very imminent.

This might or might not come to anything. But if Blair is contemplating a swift exit, then I would suggest it might have something to do with the recent revelations from Guido revealing the existence of the secret email system that No 10 initially denied, together with the Daily Telegraph story claiming that police have now found a handwritten note from Mr Blair implicating him directly in the cash-for-peerages affair.

In my latest Podcast, which is now live, I take the view that things can now only get worse for Mr Blair, and that each new problem that arises, while it may be small in itself, is pushing him more firmly towards the exit door.

"He has made it clear he still wants to go out on a high, and has publicly stated his intention to remain in charge at least until the EU Summit due to take place at the end of June, but the odds on an enforced departure occurring well before then are now shortening by the day. Indeed, all things now appear to be conspiring towards that inevitable conclusion."

This post was featured on "Best of the Web" on Comment is Free.