Saturday, February 04, 2006

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.

11 comments:

Anonymous said...

"newer MPs who are both capable and credible (Vaizey, Gove, Herbert, Burrowes, Afriyie etc…) "

I don't think David Burrowes is more capable and credible than, uhm, Jeremy Corbyn.
The others are promising.

Balls is a disaster on TV, he's the perfect man for behind the scene politics. He should leave front line politics to his wife.

New Ayrshire North and Arran MP, Katy Clark, is pretty good, but she has joined the Campaign Group, so her career is already finished (unless if she makes some big Uturns à la Beckett or Primarolo).

9 as vote appeal for Hagues? It seems voters didn't think so 5 years ago.
Anyway I'm probably biased, because I don't consider him very good. Infact I'm a bit surprised by how much tories supporters usually rate him.

Hilary Armstrong's rating should be lower....that woman is really clueless.....too busy asking Clare Short's written letters about her rebellious intentions.

Anonymous said...

john prescott gets 8 for appeal?

and the walking foetus gets a 9?

Anonymous said...

David Willetts?

hahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha

You lot are as delusional as ever

Anonymous said...

Cheers for including my post Iain… it seems it’s a day for me making relevant points :)

Bob Piper said...

William Hague.... voter appeal.... was that just your little joke! The boy with the baseball cap is almost universally, outside of the small group of Tory arse lickers in the chattering classes, regarded as a complete no hoper. If this isn't meant to be a little funny in the middle of your posting, then I really think you need to get out and talk to more people.

Anonymous said...

Theresa May a 7?? You must be joking!

I wouldn't give the woman a 1.

Hughes Views said...

Like many of your commentators I find some of your scores for voter appeal (in both parties) rather eccentric. Even though I'm a politics geek I've never heard of about a quarter of the Tories so I'll have to put away my prejudice and give them the benefit of the doubt.

I met Liam Fox once, he seemed awfully cross because I didn't know who he was, I'd mark him as a 1 but you might put this down to bias. Theresa May gets a -1 from me (Anonymous must be a brave man; I certainly wouldn't give her one arf arf) and William Hague a 10 if he's going into panto otherwise 5 for his amiability.

But given the 39 months at least we have to wait for a real election, there's plenty of time for us and them to play your entertaining game!

Anonymous said...

Sorry but aside from Blair and Cameron, none of the people on either list have voter appeal.

Anonymous said...

How can Hague get a 9 for voter appeal when we lost a general election?

Andy said...

Some bizarre numbers there, Iain, though in many cases I agree with the relative positioning between the Labour and Tory opposite numbers - I just thing you've vastly over-inflated their voter appeal. Probably two thirds of the names on both lists actually have negative appeal. I think you've been a bit harsh on Alan Duncan though - I do think he's one of your star performers.

I have to disagree with the earlier commenter, I'd certainly give Theresa May 1 - in fact, 2 or 3. Viz-style jokes aside, I think to voters she has a visible human side and, therefore, public appeal. Hazel Blears, on the other hand, is possibly the most unappealing MP in the whole of Westminster - a patronising automaton with no visible justification for holding a role in public life.

Chris Grayling may be talented, but he has the appeal of Christopher Lee in an early Hammer Horror...

Anonymous said...

9/10 for Hague as voter friendly? This would be the same man who lost the 2001 election by a landslide.

Don't mistake the famous British love for a loser for political popularity. Many people still see Hague as a joke who is not fit to hold such high office as the Foreign Office.