It's time for an Alan Johnson/Ed Balls job swap
Ben Brogan and James Kirkup have rightly taken David Cameron to task for the snotty condescension he displayed during a scratchy PM's Questions today. It would have left onlookers thinking not that Ed...
View ArticleAlan Johnson steps down as shadow chancellor: Will Ed Balls steal the show?
At the moment, this is still at the rumour stage. But I hear that Alan Johnson is about to depart his post as Labour shadow chancellor. After a very rough time, it's hardly a surprise. But it will...
View ArticleAlan Johnson's resignation: A disaster on all fronts for Red Ed
Disaster. There is no other word to describe what Alan Johnson's departure means for Ed Miliband. Until the Telegraph broke the news, this was a bad day for David Cameron. Now it's a great one: the...
View ArticleAlan Johnson resigns: Shadow cabinet kept in the dark
It was the best kept political secret. Senior shadow cabinet members knew nothing until two minutes before the announcement that the shadow chancellor was to quit. The whole pack move appears to have...
View ArticleThe timing is a surprise, but Alan Johnson was always going to go
Suddenly the shape of the Labour team that will face the Tories in 2015 is a lot clearer. While no one anticipated Alan Johnson quitting the political stage quite so soon – and so suddenly – it was...
View ArticleEd Balls will be brilliant. David Cameron should be very afraid
Don't believe the Jeremiahs. The Alan Johnson crisis is not a debacle for Ed Miliband. Johnson is a great politician, but he wasn't on top of the detail, and he wasn't up to the job. Whatever his...
View ArticleEd Balls is hated and close to Gordon Brown. How much does that matter?
In the minutes before and after Alan Johnson’s departure, I was one of many who suggested that his resignation would raise questions about Ed Miliband’s judgment. I was mostly – but not entirely –...
View ArticleSome politicians come from humble backgrounds, but that's no reason to...
I had thought that the arrival of David Cameron as PM had allowed us all to move on from the idea that biography is destiny, the notion that your parents' income and the school you attended are the...
View ArticleThe state has already taken on the role of daddy; now it wants to be mummy too
I was so glad to see David Hasselhoff making an appearance the other day, offering to lend his support to the Big Society. I suppose in a sense you could say that Michael Knight from Knight Rider was...
View ArticleAlan Johnson should have been prime minister
When it looked for a short while as though Labour might, after all, have the guts to get rid of Gordon Brown and replace him as leader, there was one name that genuinely troubled senior Tories. And it...
View ArticleLabour can win the general election. But Ed Miliband needs to fall on his sword
This is a photograph of Alan Johnson, winner of the Royal Society of Literature's Ondaatje Prize and the Orwell Prize. You'll remember him as Home Secretary and, briefly and ingloriously, Ed Miliband's...
View ArticleEd Miliband is really quite bad at his job. For the sake of democracy, he has...
Kids: don’t talk to strangers. There’s a risk you’ll end up being name-dropped by Ed Miliband in a conference speech. This year he quoted about a thousand people he’d met in supermarkets as part of a...
View ArticleIf Ed Miliband falls under a bus, who will replace him?
Ben Riley-Smith’s report in the Telegraph on Monday about Labour MPs urging Alan Johnson to launch a leadership bid has really set the cat amongst the bacon sandwiches. My understanding is that Johnson...
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