Gareth Roberts Gareth Roberts

Meet the next lot of ministers to ruin the country

Jonathan Ashworth (Photo: Getty)

We’re going to be lumbered with them for at least five years, so I think it’s time to have a good look at the incoming Labour cabinet. Not the ones we know and love of old – Thornberry, Lammy or Miliband – or Starmer and Rayner, who may still be fresh-ish, but are very well established in our minds. No, I’m talking about the assortment of front bench faces that haven’t yet stuck in our cerebellums. This lot are presently fairly anonymous and unexamined, but pretty soon they’ll be smoothly taking up the reins of their Tory predecessors with a broadly similar plan to drive the country into the ground, only a bit quicker, so we should get ourselves acquainted.  

Here are my pick of the crop. 

Jonathan Ashworth – My favourite. A likely lad. A bit of a ‘cheeky chappie’. If the Labour cabinet is a staff room at a failing comprehensive, with Starmer as the headmaster, Ashworth is the PE teacher, always slipping in to meetings five minutes late wearing a tracksuit and muddy boots.

Get Britain's best politics newsletters

Register to get The Spectator's insight and opinion straight to your inbox. You can then read two free articles each week.

Already a subscriber? Log in

Comments

Join the debate for just £1 a month

Be part of the conversation with other Spectator readers by getting your first three months for £3.

Already a subscriber? Log in