I was looking over the reshuffle yesterday and one element struck me. There’s been a lot of talk about how the reshuffle recreates the New Labour glory years/is a sad old tribute act (delete according to preference).
Perhaps as important feature is the increasing influence of the Labour whips office.
There are two elements to this. Outside the very top table (The PM, deputy leaders, Chancellor, Straw, Mandelson), the great survivors of Labour in government have been the ex-whips.
Of course there’s Nick Brown, but of the 1997 ministerial team there’s also Margaret Beckett, Geoff Hoon, Ann Taylor, John Spellar, Tommy McAvoy, Bob Ainsworth, Jane Kennedy and Angela Eagle. All former whips, and all still in government.* Margaret Beckett and Ann Taylor deserve a special mention, since they joined the Labour whips office in 1975 and 1977 respectively.
This group of long serving ministerial ex-whips provide a core institutional stability and memory to the party. Their importance is often far greater than their public profile suggests.
Alongside the remarkable longevity of the whips office is the Whip diaspora. People like Tom Watson, Jim Murphy, Kevin Brennan, Sadiq Khan, Alan Campbell, Wayne David, Mike Foster, Gillian Merron and Jonathon Shaw have served in the whips office before moving to a ministerial department. (I’m sure I’ve missed others).
This is a relatively new development in the Labour party, but it suggests that unless you have direct Prime Ministerial patronage, the surest route to power in the Labour party now lies through the whips office.
*I think Dawn Primarolo can claim to be the only non-whip to be added to the Ministerial survivors list.
1 Comment
October 10, 2008 at 3:05 pm
Bridget Prentice also spent time as a whip before moving on to MoJ.