Tag Archives: labour shadow cabinet elections 2010

New generation? Labour shadow team is just 1.25 years younger than Cabinet

8:38pm Fri October 8th
Share
9 comments

Ed Miliband’s new shadow cabinet team has an average age of 50.0 compared to 51.25 for their Coalition counterparts, Scrapbook has calculated. Using birth dates – as opposed to the age at last birthday – produces a more accurate picture.

Youngest front benchers

Alexander: youngest front bencher

Perhaps at odds with Ed Miliband’s claim to lead a “new generation”, the three youngest front benchers in the Commons are from the coalition. A total of five front benchers were born after Ted Heath defeated Harold Wilson in the general election of June 1970:

  1. Danny Alexander (38.4 years)
  2. George Osborne (39.4)
  3. Sayeeda Warsi (39.6)
  4. Sadiq Khan (40.03)
  5. Liam Byrne (40.04)

Oldest front benchers

Clarke: eating hats keeps him young at heart

Notwithstanding a potential government U-turn on eligibility, five Labour shadows could apply for free bus passes as opposed to two of the current Cabinet. Four front benchers were alive during Clement Attlee’s reforming post-war government.*

  1. Ken Clarke (70.3 years)
  2. Vince Cable (67.5)
  3. Tessa Jowell (63.1)
  4. Peter Hain (60.7)
  5. Alan Johnson (60.4)

Political Scrapbook: doing journalists’ work for them since 2009!

*His chancellor for the 1950 general election was Stafford Cripps, in case Kay Burley was wondering.

Share

Shadow Cabinet election results

8:06pm Thu October 7th
Share
18 comments

The Winners

Yvette Cooper (232)

John Healey (192)

Ed Balls (179)

Angela Eagle (165)

Andy Burnham (165)

Alan Johnson (163)

Douglas Alexander (160)

Jim Murphy (160)

Tessa Jowell (152)

Caroline Flint (139)

John Denham (129)

Hilary Benn (128)

Sadiq Khan (128)

Mary Creah (119)

Ann McKechin (117)

Maria Eagle (107)

Meg Hillier (106)

Ivan Lewis (104)

Liam Byrne (100)

The losers

Thornberry 99, Hain 97, MacTaggart 88, Keeley 87, Coaker 85, McFadden 84, Goodman 80, Lammy 80, Timms 79, Bryant 77, Woodward 72, Thomas 71, Jones 68, Brennan 64, Blackman-Woods 63, Abbott 59, Harris 54, Twigg 55, Bradshaw 53, Wright 43, Gardiner 41, Hanson 38, Lucas 34, David 30, Irranca-Davies 28, Leslie 26, Flello 15, Gapes 12, Michael 11, Joyce 10

Share

Shadow Cabinet elections in graphs

10:25am Wed September 22nd
Share
12 comments

Labour’s Shadow Cabinet elections got busier again yesterday with at least two more hopefuls (including Mike Gapes and Wayne David) sending out emails to their parliamentary colleagues. Following changes to the PLP rules women can count on a minimum of seven places at the top table. Including Harriet Harman this means a minimum of six will be elected from the Commons, as shown below:


Though the proportion of women running for shadow cabinet is approximately the same as the men, there are far fewer female incumbents looking for a return. Yvette Cooper and Tessa Jowell are the only two women from the Brown ministry seeking election to the shadow cabinet, in addition to Rosie Winterton, who has been shadowing the Leader of the House of Commons following Harriet Harman’s temporary accession to the leadership.

Amongst the men, however, there are 14 male incumbents expected to run for a maximum of 13 places (see above). Scrapbook understands that the likes of Steven Twigg, Chris Bryant and David Lammy have worked the new intake hard making it increasingly likely that a number of incumbent shadow cabinet males won’t win election in a few weeks.

Therefore if you’re a female member of the Parliamentary Labour Party your chances of promotion are far greater than if you’re a man.

Here’s hoping they’re not just window dressing!

Share

Scottish ShadCab dynamics shift as Glasgow MP Ann McKechin to run

2:20pm Mon September 20th
Share
2 comments

Glasgow North MP Ann McKechin has declared that she is to run in the Shadow Cabinet elections, Scrapbook can reveal.

A lot has changed since we last wrote about the aspirant Scottish contenders with the woman tipped as the next Shadow Scottish Secretary declining to run. Meanwhile the blogosphere’s favourite, Tom Harris, spent five minutes in the race for Chief Whip before backing Jim Fitzpatrick. Tom’s now thrown his hat into a tight Shadow Cabinet field with only 13 places for men.

With Jim Murphy and Douglas Alexander both as keen to avoid being stuck with the Scotland job as their Welsh counterparts are with the Wales job they’ll likely put considerable effort into ensuring another Scot is in the Shadow Cabinet, a task which is undeniably easier in the women’s section.

Having voted against the Iraq War Ann McKechin openly describes herself as ‘soft left’, and is one of Ed Miliband’s Scottish lieutenants along with Margaret Curran. With Scottish Labour more than doubling the number of women they send to Westminster they now have proportionately more female MPs than the rest of the Labour Party. It therefore seems only natural that they would want one of their own in the Shadow Cabinet.

Jim Murphy might just have dodged the bullet.

Share

Mann to hand over Shadow Cabinet votes to Constituency Party

12:05pm Sun September 19th
Share
2 comments

Labour MP John Mann is to hand over the majority of his shadow cabinet votes to his local constituency party, Scrapbook can reveal.

Earlier in the summer Mann organised a primary vote on the Labour leadership, sending ballot papers to 16,000 voters identified as Labour supporters in his Bassetlaw Constituency. On a 32% turnout Bassetlaw backed David Miliband with just over half of all first preference votes – which resulted in Mann switching his support from Ed Miliband to David.

Continuing in this spirit of consultation Mann is balloting his Constituency Labour Party (CLP) on how he should cast 10 of his 19 shadow cabinet votes. The member for Bassetlaw is inviting candidates CVs to send out with ballot papers – which should make for interesting reading!

Scrapbook understands Mann’s next primary will be to decide how he votes in the X-Factor live finals.

Share

Shadow Wales Secretary: the job that no-one wants

11:45am Thu September 9th
Share
1 comment

Following on from Scrapbook’s earlier post about the runners and riders for the post of Shadow Scottish Secretary we thought we’d take a look at the contenders for the Wales job.

Unlike its Scottish counterpart which has seen holders of the post propelled to lofty positions like Chancellor of the Exchequer, Home Secretary, or tipped as a potential Foreign Secretary, Labour Welsh Secretaries are more likely to be propelled to the backbenches, or worse-still Clapham Common. It’s little wonder therefore that of the three Welsh MPs in contention for the Shadow Cabinet: Peter Hain; Chris Bryant; and Kevin Brennan – nobody wants the job!

Its widely thought that of the three Peter Hain will be the one who struggles to get elected to the ShadCab, with the prevailing sentiment amongst the PLP being that he’s part of a generation whose time is up. But Scrapbook has it on good authority that Bryant and Brennan are both desperate to see Hain elected to the Shadow Cabinet so that neither of them are stuck with the Wales job.

Of course political favours will be doled out by the victorious leadership candidate: with Bryant backing David Miliband; Hain backing Ed Miliband; and Brennan backing Ed Balls.

More than likely for whomever gets the Wales job it’ll be a punishment.

Share

Labour MPs presented with options for shadow cabinet reform

12:40pm Thu July 29th
Share
11 comments

The Parliamentary Labour Party (PLP) have been presented with options for reform of the shadow cabinet. Letters to MPs from Margaret Beckett and Tony Lloyd pave the way for ballots on 8 September for the size, composition and gender profile of the shadow cabinet and between 30 September and 7 October for its membership.

The timetable is underpinned by the imperative to have an opposition team in place for the Comprehensive Spending Review on 20 October. The options for MPs outlined in the letter from Beckett are:

Selection of the shadow cabinet: wholly appointed by the leader; wholly elected by Commons members of the PLP; wholly appointed by the party leader; 50/50 split between party leader appointments and elected by Commons members of the PLP; two thirds elected by Commons members of the PLP, one third appointed by the Leader.

Size of the shadow cabinet. In addition to the leader, deputy leader, PLP chair, leader and chief whip in the lords, the available options will be: 19 members (present number); 16 members; 12 members.

Gender profile. The percentage of places reserved for women: 50 percent; 40 percent; matching the whole PLP’s current profile of 31.5 percent; 30%, increasing to 50% by 2012.

Frequency of elections: every year; every 2 years; once a parliament.

The PLP will also be asked whether the Chief Whip should be appointed by the leader or elected by MPs.

While anoraks and other observers will savour the prospect of a mini-referendum to precede the election proper, the process has not been welcomed by some senior Labour MPs. Garry Gibbon quotes one former cabinet minister:

“Shadow Cabinet elections? Why the hell didn’t we abolish them? We just forgot.”

This sets the scene for plenty of arm-twisting at Labour conference in Manchester.

Share

Deductive reasoning: Shadow Scottish Secretary

1:39pm Mon July 19th
Share
6 comments

Scrapbook’s acting editor Socialist Animal get’s about a bit. Yesterday I put in a guest appearance on Will Patterson’s blog speculating as to the contenders for Shadow Secretary of Scotland. I speculated that as all the current Scots in the Shadow Cabinet have been Scottish Secretary before it’s unlikely that any of them will want the job again. I concluded therefore that the likely contenders would be someone who’s held some lower ministerial job in the past and someone who’s supporting one of the two Milibrothers. That means Ann McKechin and Margaret Curran who are both supporting Ed Miliband, and Tom Harris, Frank Roy, David Cairns and Anne McGuire who are all supporting David.

Margaret Curran, though a formet Cabinet Minister in Scotland, is a new MP and not thought to be interested in climbing the greasy pole. Ann McKechin was Labour’s last PUSS in the Scotland Office and in the event of a Miliband (E) victory could potentially be a contender.

However the more likely scenario is that the Shadow Secretary of State will be one of the elder Miliband’s supporters. Tom Harris seems to have burned his bridges with his blog, and Frank Roy – though an affable figure in private – is probably too abrasive a character to be London Labour’s man in Scotland, particularly with an election just months away. David Cairns was Minister of State for Scotland during the last Holyrood elections, which weren’t exactly a stellar success for Labour or the Scotland Office. This leaves Stirling MP Anne McGuire.

A popular figure with both activists and MPs, Anne McGuire could play well against Salmond while not over-shadowing Scots leader Iain Gray. And if she can make a few more speeches like her 1998 ‘Gies a job!’ conference speech then she’ll certainly rouse the troops.

Success in the Scotland job can lead to big promotions, and with Labour polling a 16-point lead for next year’s Holyrood elections whomever get’s the job has got to fancy their chances.

Share
  • GMB Remploy campaign

  • Follow us on Twitter