Alan Johnson has been more comic than cutting during his spell as shadow chancellor.
It’s not so much that he’s doing a bad job, but rather that he’s taken a singular approach to the biggest political issue of the day. Where Labour MPs have wanted moral outrage, he has delivered
easy quips. Where the public might expect self-confidence, he has chosen self-deprecation. It may be charming, but the question is: does it win votes?
Which is why it’s intriguing to see Johnson change course today, via a surprisingly spiky article in the New Statesman. There is, so far as I can tell, not one intentional gag in the entire piece – but a sizeable dollop of coalition baiting. Johnson calls for a new mantra from his party: “Labour’s record was good”. He outlines the “nonsense being spread by some of his political enemies”.
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