By Lucy Phillips
8 October 2010
Caroline Flint was appointed shadow local government secretary by Labour leader Ed Miliband today.
The former housing minister and MP for Don Valley will face Local Government Secretary Eric Pickles across the despatch box.
Tony Travers, director of the Greater London Group at London School of Economics, said Flint and Pickles would make ‘a fascinating sparing pair’. He described Flint as a ‘determined, highly intelligent and tough’ person, who would ‘give Pickles a run for his money’.
Flint resigned from her last government job as minister for Europe in 2009 after accusing the then prime minister Gordon Brown of treating her like ‘female window dressing’. Prior to that she was minister of state for housing and before that for employment and welfare reform.
Anna Turley, deputy director of the New Local Government Network, told Public Finance: ‘Caroline should not be underestimated… It’s a really shrewd appointment. She is very clever, has lots of nous and a really great grasp of a range of issues.’
Turley added that Flint was ‘not afraid of a fight and was a reformer… The [local government] sector needs strong but savvy women at its forefront.'
In a surprise move, former home secretary Alan Johnson was appointed to oppose George Osborne as shadow chancellor. The post was widely expected to go to Ed Balls, a Labour leadership contender and former chief economic adviser to Brown, or his wife Yvette Cooper, the former work and pensions secretary who won the most votes in the party’s shadow cabinet election.
Travers said it was ‘politically wise’ to appoint Johnson, avoiding the risk of positioning Balls or Cooper ‘with their very distinctive views, in a very powerful position’.
During his leadership campaign, Balls said that the deficit should be cut at a slower pace than previously set out by Labour. Former chancellor Alistair Darling had set out a plan to halve the £156bn deficit within four years. The coalition government plans to go further than this by eliminating the entire structural deficit during the current Parliament.
Travers said Johnson was a ‘consensual and well-liked politician’, even by some Conservatives. But he added: ‘We don’t know much about him as a finance expert. He has been at health and the Home Office where you spend money. Now he must come up with a convincing strategy of what Labour would have done to cut slightly less than the coalition.’
Miliband gave Balls the post of shadow home secretary and Cooper the role of shadow foreign secretary.
Other appointments to the shadow cabinet include former local government minister John Healey as shadow health secretary, Andy Burnham as shadow education secretary, Liam Byrne as shadow Cabinet Office minister and Angela Eagle as shadow chief secretary to the Treasury.
Announcing the appointments, Miliband said: ‘My team is united in one central mission for the future – to win back the trust of the British people and take Labour back to power.’
