Why Tony Blair Will Reshuffle His Team

One of the comments in the previous post got me thinking. An anonyous correspondent said

"Look at the labour benches, what real “stars” are there? There are clever, capable MPs to be sure (Byrne, Cooper, Alexander, Hutton, Cooper and the Milibands) but nothing exceptional and the same is true of the cabinet itself (Clark, Hewitt, Straw etc…) indeed the cabinet beyond perhaps Brown, Benn and Johnson seems a bastion of mediocrity.This would seem to be in sharp contrast to the Conservative benches, there are a number of newer MPs who are both capable and credible (Vaizey, Gove, Herbert, Burrowes, Afriyie etc…) and have the potential to become really impressive parliamentarians and again in contrast to Labour this would seem to also be the case with the shadow cabinet itself with capable, articulate figures such as Hague, Osborne, Davis, Fox and Willets all of whom at very least match and more often than not better their opposite numbers."

It's this last point that is important, and will become increasingly so, because Opposition politicians have to do better than their Government opponents just to get a small amount of media coverage. If you marked the two benches out of ten for experience the Government would naturally win hands down, but if you did it on media savviness and voter appeal you get rather a different story...

EXPERIENCE

Tony Blair 9 David Cameron 5
Gordon Brown 9 George Osborne 5
Charles Clarke 7 David Davis 7
Ruth Kelly 5 David Willetts 7
Alan Johnson 7 Alan Duncan 6
Patricia Hewitt 7 Andrew Lansley 5
John Prescott 9 Caroline Spelman 5
Geoff Hoon 7 Theresa May 6
Jack Straw 8 William Hague 9
Alistair Darling 7 Chris Grayling 6
John Reid 8 Liam Fox 7
Tessa Jowell 7 Hugo Swire 5
Hilary Armstrong 6 Patrick McLoughlin 7
Peter Hain 7 David Lidington 5
Hilary Benn 6 Andrew Mitchell 6
Lord Falconer 7 Oliver Heald 6
John Hutton 6 Philip Hammond 5
David Miliband 6 Oliver Letwin 7
Des Browne 6 Theresa Villiers 5
Margaret Beckett 9 Peter Ainsworth 7
Ian McCartney 6 Francis Maude 8

TOTAL 149 TOTAL 128

VOTER APPEAL

Tony Blair 8 David Cameron 9
Gordon Brown 7 George Osborne 7
Charles Clarke 7 David Davis 8
Ruth Kelly 5 David Willetts 6
Alan Johnson 7 Alan Duncan 7
Patricia Hewitt 5 Andrew Lansley 6
John Prescott 8 Caroline Spelman 7
Geoff Hoon 5 Theresa May 7
Jack Straw 7 William Hague 9
Alistair Darling 6 Chris Grayling 6
John Reid 7 Liam Fox 7
Tessa Jowell 6 Hugo Swire 6
Hilary Armstrong 6 Patrick McLoughlin 7
Peter Hain 7 David Lidington 6
Hilary Benn 7 Andrew Mitchell 6
Lord Falconer 5 Oliver Heald 6
John Hutton 6 Philip Hammond 7
David Miliband 7 Oliver Letwin 7
Des Browne 6 Theresa Villiers 7
Margaret Beckett 7 Peter Ainsworth 7
Ian McCartney 5 Francis Maude 7

TOTAL 140 TOTAL 148

And this is the real reason Tony Blair needs a reshuffle. He needs to bring in some fresh faces who will boost New Labour's voter appeal. The names I mention in the previous post (Caroline Flint, Hazel Blears, James Purnell and Tony McNulty) would each do that in different ways. But if you go through the Labour Ministers of State it's a pretty poor picture for Blair. Many of them are Brownites and few have been impressive performers. It was a similar situation in the late 1980s for Margaret Thatcher. She found that the only people she could promote to the Cabinet were not fully paid up supporters of hers and not great media performers. So when she needed their support, they weren't prepared to give it. I can see a similar situation developing for Blair. If he loses the Education vote but still wants to stay on, it is a very realistic scenario that his Cabinet could turn on him and refuse to give him their support. The whips have a lot to answer for. Hilary Armstrong has failed to ensure that the best people are promoted within Government, just as successive Conservative chief whips did in the 1980s. Whips should learn from history, rather than allow it to be repeated.