Left Foot Forward readers overwhelmingly want the former shadow chancellor brought back into the fold.
Left Foot Forward readers overwhelmingly want the former shadow chancellor brought back into the fold
Message to Ed Miliband: bring Alan Johnson back into the Cabinet. Or at least that’s the message Left Foot Forward readers have given in our latest poll.
Almost three quarters (68 per cent) of those who voted said that the former shadow chancellor should be brought back to the Labour front bench, with just 26 per cent rejecting the idea.
Six per cent of respondents said it didn’t matter whether or not Miliband brought back Johnson.
The suggestion was first mooted by former home secretary David Blunkett, who suggested last week that Miliband should bring some “oldies” back into his top team, specifically Alan Johnson. Johnson quit as shadow chancellor in 2010 and has been on the backbenches ever since.
However it looks like many on the left still see a role for him in the shadow cabinet and, hopefully, a future Labour government.
One of the things that undoubtedly fuels public apathy toward politics is the sense that the political class are all from the same social background. This at least partly explains the success as a communicator of UKIP leader Nigel Farage. To use the tired cliche, he sounds like ‘someone you might meet down the pub’.
Similarly with Alan Johnson. Johnson grew up in a poor household and is a former postman. In the real world this isn’t particularly exceptional, but in the Westminster bubble he might as well be an alien life form. And as we’ve seen with Nigel Farage, hardly a man of the people but someone who at least speaks human, ordinariness can be turned to your advantage in a world inhabited largely by Oxbridge types.
And I suspect that’s why LFF readers overwhelmingly view Alan Johnson as a potential asset to Ed Miliband. He’s intelligent, likeable and, most importantly, he resembles an actual human being. Politics could do with a lot more people like that.
25 Responses to “Bring back Alan Johnson, say Left Foot Forward readers”
Hettie
The Labour Party has been taken over by the careerists who destroyed its core values and sought/and seek power for powers sake The result is we are now just like the Americans where there is little or no difference between the two ie Labour /Tory parties. The whole Westminster system is corrupt. For example….vote a politician out…and hey presto he/she can turns up( zombie like) in the anachronistic unelected House of Lords where,they can pocket £30+ expense per day if they turn up….and why wouldn’t they, once ensconsed there they don’t have to do anything except show up!!!!
Norfolk29
Read Roy Jenkins biography of Churchill and you will agree with me. Churchill wore out Attlee’s Administration with continuous votes of “no confidence”. The period between the 1950 and 1951 election was warfare until they could take no more. If Clem had renewed his front bench he might have survived but they were dying in front of his eyes and his only consideration was preserving unity.
Miliband has a young team that lacks experience, despite their obvious abilities, and Douglas Alexander demonstrated that only this morning on the Today Programme. They need a team of Elders. I am 76 and I agree with you on wisdom and determination.
AlanGiles
Bring back Alan Johnson. Why, for God’s sake?. Apart from being yesterdays man in spades – one of Blair’s great lackies, he was a disaster in his final shadow Chancellor role (even worse than Balls) at DWP he hit on the wheeze of wanting to have DWP employees accosting unemployed patients in GP waiting rooms, a move which would have compromised confidentiality rules since receptionists would have had to tip off the DWP employee about the patients circumstances.
I can understand the idea – a nice litttle right wing lickspittle who would do what the boss told him, made more palatable because he is using a cheeky little working class accent. But they have Cruddas for that role now – the thinking man’s Arthur Mullard – the Labour top men and their patronising idea that their right wing ideas are somehow more palatable served up by one of the working classes “own sort”.
I think Blunkett’s credibility fell round his ankles when he published his Pooteresque diaries in 2006 and to make even more money had them serialised in the Daily Mail. I would take any of his suggestions with a health warning.
Labour these days, I am sorry to say, is a principle free zone, a party desperate to find some meaningful role. All it is doing now is triangulating like mad and trying to out-Tory the Tories on welfare.
It’s bad enough having today’s train wrecks – Reeves, Hunt etc without dragging back one of Blair’s boys
AlanGiles
Sadly Carol, the likes of Dave don’t feel comfortable with the truth. Many “Labour” supporters roll over or turn a blind eye to things that, if the Coalition had said them, they would be outraged (Miliband’s welfare reform speech last week for example).
AlanGiles
Mandy and Campbell?. Shady snobbery from one and dodgy dossiers from the other. Both held in contempt by ordinary decent people. You must badly want Labour to lose!