Labour Cabinet Reshuffle

[GORE]

am i the only person that is foaming at the mouth over this?

blair didnt even have the guts to actually sack anyone after some of the monumental cock-ups over this last year. all he did was offer his 'cabinet friends' new jobs, of which they all accepted, except for charles clarke who only lost his job because he refused any of the alternatives.

after he stripped prescott of most of his responsibilities, it turns out he gets to keep his 2 government houses and salary (probably his 2+ jags on travelling expenses aswel).

from the scotsman.com:
Another Labour MP, former sports minister Kate Hoey, was also unclear as to what Prescott's role would be.
"What on earth is he going to get paid for?" she was quoted as saying in the Daily Mirror.

blair even took some of prescotts old responsibilities and made a new job, minister for 'social exclusion' just to keep another of his 'friends' on the cabinet.


in my opinion this is a joke, though a reshuffle doesnt automatically mean people get sacked, everyone was calling for a reshuffle so people would be sacked because of the amount of incompetence that was shown by numerous cabinet staff. all blair has done is try to fool everyone that he has made a major change, but in fact its all cosmetic.

im now on the bandwagon calling for a date/timetable of the hand-over of power. blairs time is up.

[Perikles]

I know, I think it is time for a governemnt Re-shuffle, shuffleing Blair out, and his party......

Prescott is going to get paid for doing bugger all, I say that he should go!

[Tostig]

What's Mandelson's current job? Why, unelected present Commissioner of the European Union for Trade, responsible for the Bra Wars fiasco, (once he had resigned twice though).

But what about our beloved Home Secretary from 2001 to 2004, Mr Blunkett? I know he was forced to resign due to scandal, but he was swiftly installed as Secretary of State for Work. Oh Noes! He was again forced to resign on November 2, 2005.

Tony's cronies are old news. But remember kiddies, vote New Labour.

[GORE]

Prescott is going to get paid for doing bugger all, I say that he should go!

even a member of the same party saying she doesnt know whta he'l get paid for is amazing. what gets me is this will go on, and nothing will be done about it.

Of course, my personal pet peeve of this whole thing: Opus Dei For Gay Rights, hmm, sensible move? No, interstingt move? Certainly.

i hadnt noticed that one, quite a dumb move, why not just give the job to the pope and be done with.

my question is
why sack Jack Straw? anyone notice that all the top jobs are held by staunch blairites now...

i agree there, one of the few i have respect for, he had been foreign secretary for 5 years. he had to fill robin cooks' (RIP) position, overall he didnt do a bad job either, no major scandals unlike a number of his cabinet collegues. though at times he could come across as a bit dithering he must have been good at his job.

[Tom Paine]

i hadnt noticed that one, quite a dumb move, why not just give the job to the pope and be done with.

Well they moved the bit of government that such matters were dealt with simultaneously to try to conceal it... pah.

i agree there, one of the few i have respect for, he had been foreign secretary for 5 years. he had to fill robin cooks' (RIP) position, overall he didnt do a bad job either, no major scandals unlike a number of his cabinet collegues. though at times he could come across as a bit dithering he must have been good at his job.

A bit dithering and a bit obsequious to our American "cousins over the sea", a bit of a loyalist to the party, and a bit unable to criticise said party on a matter of conscience, because he has none. Other than that, great!

[Elu Barcino]

A bit dithering and a bit obsequious to our American "cousins over the sea", a bit of a loyalist to the party, and a bit unable to criticise said party on a matter of conscience, because he has none. Other than that, great!

Didn't he go because he disagreed with Bliar about Iran?

And notice how Blair isn't moving the biggest problem of all...

[Tom Paine]

Didn't he go because he disagreed with Bliar about Iran?

Not... really. To quotre the Grauniad article before:

...Thus Jack Straw discussed last year what he would do when he stopped globe-trotting (nine years of crisis management at home and foreign offices) and told the premier he wanted to be leader of the Commons.

Intriguingly, Mr Straw believes he has done enough to prevent any UK involvement in the unlikely event of a US strike on Iran and that parliament, with him in charge, would not sanction the use of UK bases. It was not the reason for his move, that was the need for a shake-up...

And notice how Blair isn't moving the biggest problem of all...

Hell, at least everyone knows his time is over...

[King Henry V]

I know, I think it is time for a governemnt Re-shuffle, shuffleing Blair out, and his party......

Prescott is going to get paid for doing bugger all, I say that he should go!

Bliar is going to keep Precott as Deputy Prime Minister because he knows that Prescott is the biggest single reason for not assassinating Bliar. I mean, if Bliar is killed, then Prescott becomes PM and the country will be ruined!

[Tom Paine]

Bliar is going to keep Precott as Deputy Prime Minister because he knows that Prescott is the biggest single reason for not assassinating Bliar. I mean, if Bliar is killed, then Prescott becomes PM and the country will be ruined!

Preza is PM until he can organise a leadership election, which is pretty quickly, and it all goes to Brown. The erason to not assassinate Blair is it gives whoever the Home Secreatry becomes even more chance to tighten terror laws... well, that and we don't do political assassination.

[Tom Paine]

Blair out, yes, party out, maybe not. For some intyeresting articles on the Cabinet reshuffle:
The Guardian's Take
And everything here, really: The Guardian's Labour page
For a new who's who: BBC News
Of course, my personal pet peeve of this whole thing: Opus Dei For Gay Rights, hmm, sensible move? No, interstingt move? Certainly.

[the Black Prince]

the reason he kept prescott in is because to sack would mean the party would have to elect a new deputy party leader (who is also the deputy PM). i guess blair didn't want to go through the whole process of that on top of everything else his party has gone through lately...

my question is
why sack Jack Straw? anyone notice that all the top jobs are held by staunch blairites now...

[Tom Paine]

Some choices quotes for you, on that, tBP, from the Guardian article above:

Mr Blair has promoted known Brownites, such as Des Browne (defence) and Mr Alexander, who does not like the label.

He too is on good terms with Mr Brown. So is Margaret Beckett, the unexpected new foreign secretary, and John Prescott.

Ruth Kelly, more Brownite than Blairista, gets Mr Prescott's old job, an important but thankless task

[Erik]

am i the only person that is foaming at the mouth over this?

Hey! I posted about this before you did (in th elocal elections thread)...and I'm not even British.
But I too was surprised of the little/slow reaction this gets on TWC.

blair even took some of prescotts old responsibilities and made a new job, minister for 'social exclusion' just to keep another of his 'friends' on the cabinet.

And didn't he also create a second forreign minister post?
Because the world has so many countries a single minister can't possibly handle them all

im now on the bandwagon calling for a date/timetable of the hand-over of power. blairs time is up.

(in poor english accent) here, here.
But I thought it was already time to put him on early retirement when he lied about the WMD's.

Maybe that's the reason I care about this: I WANT BLAIR TO GO!! seeing his face in the media makes my physically ill.

my question is
why sack Jack Straw? anyone notice that all the top jobs are held by staunch blairites now...

Because the LOCAL elections clearly showed that th epeople of Britain are unhappy about the way he deals with forreign countries.

Forreign policy was the key issue on these local elections, right? :wink:

[Tom Paine]

And didn't he also create a second forreign minister post?
Because the world has so many countries a single minister can't possibly handle them all

No, he simply replaced the old Foreign Minister, the only person who's responsibilities were mucked around in a major way was Prezza, whose department was taken away.

[the Black Prince]

SM, this reshuffle can hardly be regarded as pro-brown at all... more the opposite, this is the PM totally asserting his power, Or to put it more bluntly, he blew a mighty raspberry in the direction of Number 11 Downing Street and the Chancellor of the Exchequer. (BBC quote!)

For the Chancellor, the most important and inflammatory of today's appointments were of Jacqui Smith as the new chief whip and Hazel Blears as chairman of the Labour Party.

Holders of these posts play a vital role in reading and influencing the mood of the party in Parliament and in the country.

So Mr Brown would have expected the appointees to be neither fanatical Blairites or committed Brownites, to be impartial facilitators in the transition from Mr Blair to his eventual successor.

However, Mr Blair opted instead for loyalists: both Ms Smith and Ms Blears are widely viewed as enthusiastic cheerleaders for him.

The Prime Minister was equally provocative to Mr Brown in the promotion of John Reid to be Home Secretary, in that Mr Reid has been the most explicit of any Cabinet member in calling on Mr Blair to remain at Number 10 until as close to the next general election as possible.

Anyway, this is not to see the reshuffle as a mass purging of the Brownites, just as an attempt by Mr Blair to engineer a shift in the balance of power in his direction.

Thus the demotion of Jack Straw, who has moved closer to Mr Brown in recent years, can be seen as damaging to the Chancellor.

His successor at the foreign office, Margaret Beckett, is a rare example of a Labour politician who keeps both Mr Blair and Mr Brown at arms length.

Even the promotion of David Miliband to become Secretary of State for the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs is viewable as a taunt to Mr Brown.

Although Mr Miliband has been voicing great enthusiasm for Mr Brown as Mr Blair's likely successor, some of Mr Miliband's Blairite colleagues would like to see him challenge Mr Brown for the leadership, as and when Mr Blair resigns.

In that context, the transfer to the youthful Mr Miliband of the environment portfolio will be interpreted as Mr Blair setting him up as the apprentice leader: more than most ministers, Mr Miliband will henceforth be leading the battle against the Conservative leader, David Cameron, who has been rebranding the blue Tories as green.

i think Iran is the big reason why Straw lost his job... he's said any number of times he doesn't believe military action is the way forward, whereas Blair has consistantl failed to rule it out, saying it would appear to send weak messages to rule out any form of military action if other sanctions failed.

[Tom Paine]

SM, this reshuffle can hardly be regarded as pro-brown at all... more the opposite, this is the PM totally asserting his power, Or to put it more bluntly, he blew a mighty raspberry in the direction of Number 11 Downing Street and the Chancellor of the Exchequer. (BBC quote!)

And yet the reshuffle has removed or demoted some Blairites from positions of consolidated and secure power, to weaker positions; and promoted some Brownies, at the same time.

i think Iran is the big reason why Straw lost his job... he's said any number of times he doesn't believe military action is the way forward, whereas Blair has consistantl failed to rule it out, saying it would appear to send weak messages to rule out any form of military action if other sanctions failed.

Its not the reason he claims or states; he says its because his work it done and military action by the UK won't happen. Sounds like a pre-emptive Cook, that does...

[the Black Prince]

what is said, what is done, and what is intended, by politicians, in all countries, in all cultures, around the world, are never the same.

It is certainly noticeable that Mr Blair has moved to place his most trusted loyalists in the most important cabinet posts - John Reid, Margaret Beckett and Geoff Hoon forming a sort of Praetorian Guard around their emperor. Even John Prescott keeps his key cabinet fixer role

(BBC Analysis)

[Tom Paine]

I refer you back here again, to this post: Brownites are being promoted to the Cabinet as surely as Blairites.
Guardian on Beckett Makes an interesting read on why she has survived... not because she's a Blairite, but because she's a survivor.
A few choice quotes from that article:

Her claws have always been there. An instinctive leftwinger from her youth, she won Lincoln back from the Labour defector, Dick Taverne, in October 1974 and quickly became a Labour whip and minister.

Between losing her seat in 1979 and finding her Derby South base in 1982 she famously lambasted fellow-lefties such as Neil Kinnock for refusing to back Tony Benn's divisive bid to displace Denis Healey as Michael Foot's deputy in 1981.

Not the best bet for a Blairite really.


On another note, in the aftermath of the reshuffle, it seems the party needs "renewal": BBC Story