20 January 2021
Gossip about Labour’s obscure front bench has started – but it’s too early to write them off
Rachel Reeves, Pat McFadden and Peter Kyle are among the Labour MPs who are underused, but the political landscape is going to change soon.
The best thing about Anneliese Dodds’ Mais Lecture on 13 January is that it was crushingly, almost preternaturally, dull. Even the economics correspondents of the serious dailies struggled to find much to say beyond the hold-page-93 headline that the National Audit Office will be licensed to survey Labour spending plans.
What meagre reviews the speech received were snarky and, in the gossip articles of the Sunday newspapers, the chatter has started against the shadow chancellor and some of her colleagues. There is something in these whispers. The shadow cabinet are a still unknown band and you might have thought that opposing Gavin Williamson, Grant Shapps, Thérèse Coffey and Matt Hancock would be an opportunity to be seized, but you deserve a prize if you can identify their four obscure shadows. Concern is starting to creep into public view from Labour MPs who worry that they are letting the Conservative Party get away with its catastrophic handling of the pandemic. In the latest poll the parties are locked: Labour on 39 per cent, the Tories on 38.