In
advance of the reshuffle, I posted four criteria against
which the Liberal Democrat part of the shuffling should be judged. Now, with
the result at hand, how does it score against my four points?
Most
importantly, have people been put in jobs they’ve got a decent chance of doing
well? It’s hard enough being a minister in the smaller party in a coalition
government without having lots of people thrown into policy areas they are
completely new to.
On
this score, the reshuffle does very well. In particular, David Laws at
education, Jeremy Browne at the Home Office, Norman Lamb at health and Lynne
Featherstone at international development all gives people policy areas they
previously have been interested in and spend time on. David’s long-running
passion for education is well known; both Norman and Jeremy were at various
times the party’s spokesperson on their new patch in opposition; and Lynne has
also both been international development spokesperson and taken a particular
interest in the international aspects of her previous Home Office brief.
The
limited swapping around of jobs with the Conservatives also makes good
campaigning and electoral sense for the party – there’s far more votes to be
won for the party in DEFRA (where one of the party’s many rural MPs, David
Heath, takes up post) and DFID (where there is the chance to appeal to one of
the party’s traditional sources of support) than in the Foreign Office, for
example, especially as all the major foreign issues end up with Nick Clegg
anyway.
Does being a minster who
disappears into their department and doesn’t do much in the way of
communicating or campaigning to promote the Liberal Democrats matter? Some
ministers have been far better than others at this; will this be reflected in
the changes?
The MPs who have done well out of the reshuffle are also good
campaigners, and ones who have consistently remembered to promote the Liberal
Democrat cause even when we’re in government. Jo Swinson is the most obvious,
and is now clearly the party’s main rising star. Tom Brake too is in this
category – he has been one
of the party’s unsung heroes –
and Don Foster (Andrew Stunell’s replacement) knows all about winning a tough
seat in a high profile election.
Quite
a few party members will have put Julian Huppert in the same category and hoped
he too would enter government. I hope Julian doesn’t mind me thinking that, for
the moment at least, he is best outside of government as the areas at which he
excels span several areas and as being a minister would not fit with being on
the Pre-legislative Scrutiny Committee for the Draft Communications Bill.
When
it comes to the moves within government, Jeremy Browne had somewhat disappeared
into the Foreign Office as a good minister but a very low profile advocate for
the party’s cause with the public. The Home Office posting gives him a chance
to remedy that.
Moving
Norman Lamb to the Department of Health not only puts a health expert in post,
it also puts in one of the hotspots an MP with an excellent record at winning
over party members to support a controversial policy – as he did with the Post
Office and Royal Mail in opposition, partly by changing some parts of it,
partly by spending a lot of time listening and communicating and partly be
persuading people of the virtues of it.
One or two other low-profile ministers may be breathing a sigh
of relief that it hasn’t counted against them so far. If there is to be another
reshuffle before the 2015 general election, that is a luxury that party can ill
afford.
David Laws is going to come
back. Even though he’s a contributor to the Orange Book and
I was a contributor to Reinventing the State,
I think those sorts of distinctions are pretty small set against what we have
in common compared to the other parties. Bringing him back is the right move as
he’s one of our most talented MPs. It would be daft however to ignore how some
party members will feel about Laws’s return. So how well balanced overall are
the changes made?
With
Laws back and Browne into a more prominent role, not to mention the friend-of-Liberator Nick Harvey sadly leaving government,
you could get all excited about a shift. Look further, however, to changes such
as the big leap up for Jo Swinson and incomers such as Tom Brake who are slap
in the mainstream of the party and the overall picture is one of very little
change in any direction.
Nick Clegg’s often talked
about the need to improve the party’s diversity. His previous government
appointments, mini-reshuffles and House of Lords appointments have shown
promising moves in that direction. Yet we are also on course to go through a
whole Parliament with a 100% white and male Lib Dem Cabinet line-up. How much
do the changes today match the previous rhetoric, even allowing for shortage of
diversity amongst those he can choose from?
For MPs, it's one woman in, one woman out, and one woman sideways. Not much
progress there save that it’s no longer a case of ‘women do the equalities and
children stuff’. Progress of a minimal sort. But with
Jenny Randerson becoming a
new Liberal Democrat minister, the number of female ministers
increases by one and also boosts the number of peers in the government by one,
very handy given how stretched those peers in government have been
covering all the issues in the Lords.
Overall then? A pretty good shuffling of the Liberal Democrat
deck. And none of it that important compared to what happens to the economy.
A version of this blog was originally published here.