[I am writing the depts and not putting shadow before each not out of arrogance but because it just makes this much more readable]

Overall I’m pretty pleased. There are people I would have liked to have seen in that aren’t (Eric Joyce wrote one of the best application letters for the role of Defence Secretary, Tom Watson would have been great against Cable at Business and while I think Meg Hillier is great, I would have loved to see Emily Thornberry at DECC). I’m not that keen on Caroline Flint at CLG, but I’ll give her a chance – she may come over well against Pickles and face it couldn’t do a worse job than he is.

I am delighted with Harman at DFID, Cooper at FO, Khan at Justice and Healey at Health. Burnham should be very interesting in Education and will have no problem demolishing the paper tiger that is Gove. John Denham is another interesting and likeable figure who will be able to skewer Cables vacillations pretty well too.

I have said before that I wanted to see Ed Balls as Shadow Chancellor as I have been so impressed with his performance in this area during the leadership debates. However I can see both the internal and external political advantages of putting Johnson in the role. He’s a big hitter who is popular with the public and will therefore be able to take forward our economic message in a way that will be listened to. He will unite the party behind Ed’s leadership, while not running an internal campaign for leader himself (I don’t think Balls would have done this either, but he would have got more crappy media speculation about him trying to). He will also be best placed to give the lie to Osborne’s “all in this together” narrative with his ordinary bloke persona. Already the internet and Twitter are full of “Well he’s just an ex-postie” class based jibes which show how the Tories really, really don’t get it.

Ed B will have an interesting brief at HO as Ed M has already made clear our direction of travel on civil liberties issues (Khan at Justice also makes this clear). Implementing the leaders strategy is vital in a Shadow Cabinet, and I trust Ed B enough to believe he will do this well.

Tags: Labour, shadow cabinet

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