Most of the reshuffle-related excitement in Westminster is focused on a pending Tory one. But does Ed Miliband’s top team need a bit of freshening up too? I blogged last week that Labour backbenchers, including a number with serious experience of government, were unhappy with the way many of the Labour top dogs are failing to go out to bat for their leader. Miliband has certainly trodden on his stumps in the past few days with some broadcast gaffes, but he does have a problem with the batting order below him.
Yvette Cooper has worked hard to turn around the Labour position on immigration from the Gillian Duffy days to boasting that the party wants to be ‘tougher than the Tories’ (although that ‘tougher than the Tories’ line seems to be applied to any policy area that Labour wants to neutralise, including immigration and welfare, rather than make radical or distinctive policy proposals on).
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