This is the first article in a series studying the people Labour will be putting forward to the nation in May. Today we start by taking a look at the Shadow Cabinet.
There are a number of disconcerting things about the MPs in the Shadow Cabinet. For a start, even for Westminster-watchers some of them are notable in their anonymity – if you want a tough quiz round, try challenging yourself to name all 28 of them. Who’s the Shadow Secretary of State for Wales? (It’s Owen Smith, but you’d be forgiven for feeling that information doesn’t get you much closer to knowing who on earth he is).
In our increasingly presidential political culture, we tend to spend most of our time talking about party leaders. Labour’s frontman gives plenty of opportunities for us to compare him unfavourably with the Prime Minister, but of course the election isn’t simply a question of Cameron versus Miliband – it’s about the wider team, too. As the Prime Minister has suffered from the failings of some of his own ministers, so any leader can be beaten down or raised up by the effectiveness of his or team.
If anything, the wider Shadow Cabinet is a weakness of the Opposition which is under-studied and under-exploited. There are signs the Conservatives are starting to realise this – the decision to bring together five Cabinet Ministers to present that attack on Labour’s dodgy fiscal plans earlier this month had the air of an invitation to go toe-to-toe, encouraging viewers to consider whether the alternative really matched up. But it’s only really when you assess the Shadow Cabinet en masse that the true scale of their problem becomes clear.
I’ve had a look through each of their CVs to see what else we can tell about the MPs in the Shadow Cabinet as a group. Politicians being politicians, not all of them have made their whole life story available (for some reason the employment history of Liz Kendall MP, Shadow Minister for Care and Older People, is particularly opaque so I’ve had to exclude her from the employment history figures) but here are some observations based on the best information available:
Work history
We know that Labour has made the transition in recent decades from a working class party to a public sector, Westminster-dominated party, but the statistics on the Shadow Cabinet still make for surprising reading. Strip out work in the public sector, in trade unions and in think tanks, and the average member has the private sector CV of a person in their mid- to late 20s:
Ministerial experience
After 13 years of Government, Labour are in a peculiar generational position. They still have a lot of people with senior ministerial experience in their Parliamentary Party, but some of them are interested in pastures new while plenty more have no faith in their leader and no desire to join his team. As a result, the Opposition Leader has been forced into choosing less experienced candidates for top jobs – and then spinning it as the ‘new generation’:
Electoral experience
Labour MPs are reportedly concerned that Miliband’s chosen team lack a track record for winning elections. Perhaps they have good reason to be afraid: