Is Lord Adonis the right man to lead Labour’s Growth Review?

One of the things we know about Labour’s policies is that the Adonis Growth Review is meant to produce a fair few of them. Launched by Ed Miliband last month, the former head of Tony Blair’s Policy Unit’s review is meant to publicly report in spring 2014.

When Miliband announced this review, he praised Adonis’s work in reforming public services in the last government. But this positive view of Adonis’ work does not seem to be shared by all the shadow cabinet. In his Guardian interview on Saturday, Andy Burnham said ‘I wasn’t cheerleading for academies.’ Academies were, of course, an Adonis initiative.

One other consequence of Adonis heading this growth review is that his presence makes it virtually impossible for Labour to drop its support for HS2. This is significant as abandoning HS2 would give Labour a lot more fiscal wiggle room. When the Tories studied the consequences of Labour’s decision to match their current departmental spending plans one of the things that most alarmed them was the prospect that Labour would junk HS2 and use that money to fund a whole host of other projects.