Labour types are pretty grumpy that yesterday’s far-reaching reshuffle of their ranks is being billed as another ‘lurch to the left’. The reality is a little more complex: the party hasn’t lurched to the left so much as lurched towards being honest about what it believes. This was what Ed Miliband did in Brighton two weeks ago. He didn’t suddenly discover, with a jolt, that he was a socialist: he just started being more honest about that.
Liam Byrne, Stephen Twigg and Jim Murphy were moved not because they were hopeless performers, but because they were never really given a chance to perform. What was Labour’s policy on free schools? Twigg spent most of his tenure being tortured by the conflict between his own instincts and what it was that the party leadership thought was right. Byrne was brought in to sound ‘tough’ on welfare, but he looked weak because he was never given full rein.
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