Work Experience?

How much help does a secretary of state’s climb up the ministerial ladder give them when they make it to the Cabinet? Much of it is gaining political skills and administrative skills. But its quite noticeable (perhaps exacerbated by the number of ministers who have sped into Cabinet without the previous tour around the lower reaches of government) how few of the existing Cabinet have served in that department previously.

2 of them, Mandelson and Hain, have been Secretary of State for their present department previously, as well as other posts.
1 of them, Straw, has only ever served as the ministerial heads of department, so hasn’t had the opportunity to gain experience lower down the government.
But of the remaining 16, only 5 have served lower down their present departmet, including the two deputies who were promoted to Cabinet at the last reshuffle:

• Darling, who was Chief Sec in the first NewLabour government in 1997
• Burnham, who’s last job before promotion to the Cabinet was as Minister of State in his present department
• Shaun Woodward, who only a Parliamentary Secretary in Northern Ireland before being leapfrogged into Cabinet
• Bob Ainsworth, Minister of State at Defence before promotion to Sec of State
• Andrew Adonis, Minister of State at Transport before promotion to Sec of State

This is an improvement on the previous position, before the last reshuffle, where only Woodward, Purnell and Darling amongst Cabinet member had served lower down in the department before landing a Cabinet job in it.

The ultimate hokey-cokey cabinet post?

Most people get just the once chance at any one job in government. It's very unusual (Mandelson with the DTI aside, and Mandelson seems to be an exception to most political rules) for someone to go back to a job a second time.

At Cabinet level, Mandelson has done it, Roy Jenkins with the Home Office has, and I think that's it, post war. There's been the odd time of someone going to back to a job they'd previously done when their party had been out of office but picking up where you left off but for the intervention of the electorate is slightly different.

So why has the SoS for Wales post (perhaps the post with the least responsibility in all government) had this retread effect twice, with both Murphy and Hain?

Secretary of State for Wales
July 2009: Paul Murphy
October 2002: Peter Hain
January 2008: Paul Murphy
June 2009: Peter Hain

Last time Hain did this job, he doubled it with the DWP job (replaced by Mr Purnell) but suddenly, in the intervening 18 months the job must have grown in importance and Hain no longer doubles-up.

Presumably, this reshuffle has been made for the same reason that Jim Murphy is in Scotland - to run campaigns for the Labour party. By any stretch of the imagination Hain is a better campaigner than (Paul) Murphy (Paul Murphy wouldn't recognise a campaign if it introduced itself) and Wales has the 2nd highest proportion of Labour seats of any UK region (and it's a bit tricky to justify a full-time Secretary of State for the North East).