The 2015 election edges closer

Half-way until the next General Election, how do we think the Labour front bench is doing?  Are they convincing as a credible government in-waiting?  Well, in their favour they have more female MPs in the shadow cabinet than their opponents and they do have some confident and weighty figures.  It’s only a personal view – I don’t know any of them personally, and only have their public performances to go by - but here are the ones I feel are the more heavyweight hitters:

Ed Balls (Shadow Chancellor).  Yes, still carries some baggage from being Gordon Brown’s man but a master of his brief and a real bruiser in political debate.  On the downside, the public continues to hold him largely to blame for the state of the economy at the time of the last general election. 

Yvette Cooper (Shadow Home Secretary).  Capable and a good performer in public. Seemed to manage the Chief Secretary and Work and Pensions portfolios in the Brown government well.  Popular among Labour MPs, topping the poll for Shadow Cabinet elections.

Andy Burnham (Health). There must be harder jobs than opposing a Tory health secretary but Burnham seems to do rather well.  

Chuka Umunna (Business, Innovations and Skills)  Bright, confident and seems very ambitious, he is a convincing performer.

Douglas Alexander (Foreign affairs).  Solid performer. Conveys integrity.

However, for me, the star of the Labour first team is Jon Cruddas MP for Dagenham and Rainham and Policy Review Co-ordinator.  Not a glory-seeker (he didn’t want to be Deputy PM if he had won the deputy leadership of the party).  He faced-down and saw off the BNP in his east London constituency.  He isn’t afraid to be known as a left winger (or at least what passes for left in today’s Labour Party).  His ideas command respect and he seems to have integrity.  Politics needs more like him.

For me, most of the other members of the Shadow Cabinet – including the leader and deputy – seem pedestrian at best.  I am nearly as tired of seeing Caroline Flint as I became at seeing Hazel Blears in the last Labour government.

It won’t be enough for Labour to count either on the public’s unhappiness with the Conservatives or the deep losses the Lib Dems are expected to face following their opportunist alliance with the Tories.  If there is to be a change of government, they need to up their game a great deal.  They also need some policies.  There is a poverty of thinking arising from the three main parties’ determination to hold the centre ground, which is why UKIP seems so buoyant.