The Shadow Cabinet turnover

I prepared this post for the next Shadow Cabinet resignation as they've come so frequently, but with a new general election now looming it's best to post these statistics now.

Since the last general election there have been:

• 5 Shadow Business Secretaries
• 5 Shadow Culture, Media and Sports Secretaries
• 5 Shadow Defence Secretaries
• 5 Shadow Welsh Secretaries
• 4 Shadow Communities and Local Government Secretaries with a fifth to come
• 4 Shadow Attorney Generals plus a vacant period
• 4 Shadow Chief Secretaries to the Treasury
• 4 Shadow Education Secretaries
• 4 Shadow Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Secretaries
• 4 Shadow Health Secretaries
• 4 Shadow Leaders of the House of Commons
• 4 Shadow Ministers for Women and Equalities
• 3 Shadow Home Secretaries
• 3 Shadow International Development Secretaries
• 3 Shadow Ministers for the Cabinet Office
• 3 Shadow Ministers without Portfolio
• 3 Shadow Northern Ireland Secretaries
• 3 Shadow Transport Secretaries
• 3 Shadow Work and Pensions Secretaries
• 2 Shadow Chancellors
• 2 Shadow Foreign Secretaries
• 2 Shadow Housing Secretaries, plus a period of being vacant before the previous holder returned
• 2 Shadow Justice Secretaries
• 2 Shadow Scottish Secretaries
• 2 Chief Whips in the Commons
• 1 Shadow Leader of the House of Lords
• 1 Chief Whip in the Lords

Posts created since the start of the current Parliament:

• 2 Shadow Brexit Secretaries
• 2 Shadow Ministers for Mental Health and vacant for a period in the middle
• 2 Shadow Ministers for Voter Engagement and Youth Affairs
• 1 Shadow International Trade Secretary
• 1 Shadow Lord President of the Council

Posts abolished mid Parliament:

• 3 Shadow Energy and Climate Change Secretaries

Posts created and (apparently) abolished mid Parliament:

• 1 Shadow Minister for Diverse Communities

Posted without comment.

A vote for X, Y *or* Z is a vote for Z? or Why Corbynistas don't care about "electibility"

It's one of the oldest cries in electoral history. Politicians will declare that a vote for one of their rivals is a vote for another. But they don't always mean it the same way.

Consider a case from fifteen years ago in the US when Al Gore and his supporters declared "A vote for Nader is a vote for Bush!" Ralph Nader responded with "A vote for Gore is a vote for Bush!" Presumably George W. Bush declared "A vote for Bush is a vote for Bush!" just in case anyone misunderelucidated.

Gore was making the classic attack on smaller parties and independents, arguing they would split the vote and let the rival in. But Nader clearly wasn't - nobody seriously believed Nader could win. Instead Nader argued that Gore was so similar to Bush that the country would get much the same, whichever one was elected. Now hindsight may suggest something differently and at the time supporters of Gore (and for that matter Bush) could doubtlessly rattle off a huge list of differences between the two candidates & their manifestos but it had no effect. Because Nader's voters either doubted the sincerity of the differences or felt that on the fundamentals both candidates were as bad as each other. A Nader vote at least allowed them to side step actually having to chose between the two and being somehow responsible.

And this isn't confined to the US. Over here in the old days the Liberal Democrats often portrayed both major parties as much the same. However at the same time at the local level the party would position itself as the only credible opposition to one of the big two in the hope of getting tactical votes from supporters of the other. Come 2015 it found this contradiction tearing its vote to shred as Labour & other left-minded voters decided that "yellow Tory" was no different from "blue Tory" and they weren't going to compromise vote for one over the other.

This is part of the reason why the Jeremy Corbyn bandwagon has proven immune to every single appeal to consider what will make the Labour Party an election winner again. The hard left of the Labour Party was never enamoured with Blair and New Labour but largely kept their heads down at the time. But looking back many despise those years and feel all they got was a conservative government in a red rosette. They don't want to make those compromises again. If the country is to have a conservative government it won't be by their votes or through their party.

This attitude exists on the right as well - there's a lot of voters who do believe the "LibLabCon" [sic] is all the same and aren't going to rush to vote one over the other and instead stick with Ukip.

What's the solution? It's old fashioned positive differentiation to show how a party is offering something different and better.

Now does the Corbynistas' attitude seem so strange?

Ten reasons why Jeremy Corbyn should be the next Labour leader

It may shock some but I think there are some good reasons why I think Jeremy Corbyn should be elected Labour leader:

1. Age. If elected Corbyn will become leader at the age of 66, the oldest person to become a leader of a major UK wide party since Michael Foot at 67 for Labour and Neville Chamberlain at 68 for the Conservatives & Unionists (and he was almost the last senior figure for whom the full name was critical). A Corbyn leadership would be a marvellous antidote to the obsession with youth in certain quarters of politics and broaden the field for consideration in other parties.
2. The beard. Beards have been out of fashion in politics in recent decades with New Labour especially practising a virulent degree of pogonophobia. To find a significant leader with a beard (well on their face) you have to go back to the Edwardian era when Lord Salisbury and Keir Hardie were the last leaders of their respective parties to sport them. By making Corbyn their leader, Labour would help bring beards back into the mainstream.
3. The cap. Headgear is often absent in politics with only George Galloway's distinctive fedora (which now seems to have been surgically attached) and Paddy Ashdown's meals getting much comment lately. But Corbyn has a wonderfully distinct cap - I believe it's called a Breton Cap - that's a gift for the cartoonists. It's time to expand the range of caps and hats in politics.
4. Clothes. Corbyn is a functional practical dresser. A tale is told of how burglars broke into his house and actually turned down his red blazer. Not for him the ridiculously expensive tailored suits worn by some Labour politicians. If he were leader the image consultants would have a nightmare - and that's no bad thing.
5. Cycling. Boris Johnson's term as Mayor is coming to an end in less than a year and he'll either drop into a lower profile or end up in a more security conscious ministerial post of the kind that discourages such open access. There'll be an opening for the position of most prominent cyclist in politics. As Leader of the Opposition Corbyn would be perfectly placed to fill it.
6. The polls. It can't be much fun being an opinion pollster at the moment. Everyone keeps bringing up the general election and won't listen to explanations about the difference between opinion polls and exit polls. Even away from politics "What would you know?" is a constant response and there's not much opportunity to rebuild reputations before the elections next year. A Corbyn victory would allow opinion polls a chance to get something right this year.
7. Bookies. It's a sign of just how much the Corbyn bid has surged that initially he odds as low as 100 to 1 or even 200 to 1. If he becomes leader a lot of bookmakers are going to have to pay out rather more on this contest than they were expecting.
8. Parliament. There is a long history of hardline socialist MPs having a greater impact outside Parliament rather than within it. They tend to go round the country making the most memorable speeches at rallies and protests instead of within the Commons. It's high time to change that and have the case for socialism made in the Commons, and from the despatch box to boot, where the immediate audience will be more diverse and where the arguments can be responded to directly.
9. Islington. This borough has a reputation for metropolitan liberal chattering class politics practised by those sitting around at trendy dinner parties and looking down with undisguised contempt on the hard working classes. This reputation has not been helped by a number of political developments, including the borough's other MP being Emily Thornberry, and has even led to Newsnight investigations as to why the country is so out of touch with Islington (erm shouldn't that be the other way round?). But whatever else you can say about Corbyn his brand of socialism is not the chattering class dinner party champagne socialist style and his leadership would allow the borough to show it's more diverse than that.
10. Taking leadership elections seriously. Corbyn was nominated because a bunch of Labour MPs felt it was important to have a debate with the hard left of the party and give it a ritualistic slaughter. They expect Corbyn to do about as well as Diane Abbott in 2010. (They also forgot that Abbott's candidacy attracted members to vote who would otherwise have not bothered and it was their transfers that ultimately gave Ed Miliband the edge.) They never expected a great surge to the point there are now groups organising around a simple Anyone-But-Corbyn line. Nobody expected the supporter option to attract all those #ToriesForCorbyn or #TrotsForCorbyn (and there are even Conservatives trying to sign up Trots for Corbyn). To a Conservative this looks bizarre - when we have our next leadership election nobody is going to think the process is somehow incomplete without the presence of an Edward Leigh, Philip Davies or Nadine Dories on the ballot paper. A Corbyn victory will be a wake-up call to take things seriously and only nominate candidates you actually want to see as leader.

So go on Labour, make him your next leader!

The Diane Abbott candidacy

Just over a decade ago my sister spent the placement year of her degree working in Diane Abbott's office. By all accounts they got on well, but whether this had any bearing on Abbott subsequently sending her son to my old school (City of London School) I don't know at all.

Abbott has now thrown her hat into the ring for the Labour leadership, and thus effectively the Labour nomination for the premiership, and it's fair to see very few people saw this coming. (Simon Woolley has been tipping her on the Operation Black Vote blog and in The Guardian but he's been very much the exception.) Now I've said before that I don't think Abbott is completely electable (Further thoughts on another "British Obama") and I still think that. It has nothing to do with her race or gender - I also think Jeremy Corbyn is completely unelectable; in fact he's even more so because he lacks Abbott's media profile.

(Abbott may have a cult following from This Week and her other media appearances, but it's not remotely enough to overcome her hard left disadvantage. And a cult media profile isn't something really necessary - this is the Labour leadership election 2010, not the Liberal Democrats leadership election 1999 after all.)

Nevertheless Abbott's candidacy will, assuming she gets enough nominations to stand (and I think she will - there are enough Labour MPs who would realise the disadvantage to the party if her candidacy is "blocked" to formally nominate her), allow her to take issues into the leadership debates and broaden the scope. I am particularly envious of the Labour leadership rules that allow all candidates to go before the full membership and rely on nominations rather than elimination rounds to demonstrate support amongst MPs. The Conservative Party would do well to adopt both of these.

Is Abbott's candidacy necessary to pave the ground for a winnable BME candidate's chances in a future leadership election? To be honest I doubt it. This isn't the United States and potential leaders here gain credibility & exposure by rising through the ranks. It's the fact that so far only one BME MP has made it to the Cabinet or Shadow Cabinet (Paul Boateng) and the timing of his rise and then decision to go to South Africa as High Commissioner has meant that there hasn't been a leadership election for him to be considered for. (I don't know if he would have run in any case, but it's hard not to envisage a what if scenario of him remaining in British politics in 2005 and emerging as a credible anti-Brown contender, even if only for the endless speculation of 2008 & 2009.)

Nevertheless Abbott's entry into the leadership election has made for an interesting contest and it remains to be seen how well she does or, perhaps more importantly, where her transfers go.