A hung parliament with how many power brokers?

I was struck by the latest opinion poll in the Guardian, not by the Con/Lab/LD results, which were much the same as they've been for some time now, but by the figure for the SNP and Plaid Cymru.

At 5%, (UK-wide), this was up (from 4.4%, so far from statistically significant) on their results in the Scottish Parliament/National Assembly elections and more than double the result they got in the 2005 General Election.

A simple doubling of their vote shares, with the adjustments of the 3 UK-wide parties based on the opinion poll movement, showed the SNP on 25 seats (up from 6 at the 05 election) and Plaid Cymru on 6 (up from 3 at the 05 election).

Which from the same doubling in vote share is a far better performance for the SNP than for Plaid - a reflection of quite how far behind Labour in Wales (every other party including) Plaid come in.

But also shows that, on a slightly smaller swing to the Tories, it won't be just the LibDems that may have a choice to make about supporting a government, but Plaid and the SNP. Will this effect how either Labour or the Conservatives will approach the issues of an independence referendum for Scotland or full powers for the National Assembly in Wales?

In one way, the above isn't a fair comparison, doubling vote share is only a uniform swing if you start from the same point. So, taking Plaid from c12% to c24% is a smaller gain than the SNP from c17% to c34%. But that 10% difference doesn't account for why the Scots can quadruple their seat numbers, and the Welsh only double them (add on that extra 10% or so to Plaid and they reach 10 seats). Move the Plaid gain to a (quite ridiculous) quadrupling of the vote, and they end up with 18 seats, more akin to the gain that their Scottish counterparts make.

So, two conclusions from this. Firstly, that a hung parliament could easily feature the SNP and Plaid Cymru as power brokers, just as much as it does the LibDems or the Northern Irish parties. Secondly, that Plaid have to do so much better than the SNP to make the same sort of breakthrough.

New departments & Prime Ministerial favour

Thatcher merged the Departments of Trade & Industry (one of the few ways in which she followed in the footsteps of Ted Heath, who also merged the two departments only for them to promptly be demerged by Harold Wilson in 1974) and split the DHSS into the Department of Social Security, and the Department of Health.

The winners in these two changes were Cecil Parkinson (a clear Thatcher favourite, all be it one who only enjoyed the re-created DTI for 4 months before being forced to resign) and Ken Clarke (far from a Thatcher favourite) who became head of the newly hived off DoH (leaving the clear Thatcher favourite, John Moore, with the denuded and politically less exciting, DSS).

John Major created the Department of National Heritage (from elements of the Home Office, Environment, and the odd other department) and merged the Department of Employment & of Education. The winners from these changes were clear and both Major favourite's: David Mellor (a friend, given the new Department for National Heritage and then, a la Cecil Parkinson, forced to resign through personal scandal a matter of months later) and Gillian Shepherd (part of the East Anglia mafia that predominated during the Major years who, having been Secretary of State for both Education and for Employment landed the combined ministry).

Tony Blair moved from the DFEE (Employment and Education) and DSS (Social Security) to the DFES (Education & Skills, shedding all but the training part of old Employment department) in favour of the DSS (becoming the DWP).
He also created the Department of Constitutional Affairs which evolved into the Justice department, from the former Lord Chancellor's department.

The winners in this? Alastair Darling (not really a Blair confidante but a respected technocrat) was the first Secretary of State for the enlarged DWP. Charlie Falconer was the first Secretary of State for Constitutional Affairs, and then for Justice. Whilst a friend of Blairs, his appointment was at the expense of another friend of Blairs, Derry Irvine.

Brown has been most active in creating and reshuffling departments: DCSF (Children, Schools and Families) was created from the old DfES, gaining children's responsibilies from other departments (eg, Social Services from health) but shedding 16+ education to the DIUS. Ed Balls (a clear Brown favourite) headed DCSF and John Denham (not known to be a clear Brown or Blair favourite) DIUS. The new Department for Energy and Climate Change, was headed by Ed Miliband, another ex-Brown adviser. And of course, most prominently of all, Mandelson became head of the new super-department of Business, Innovation and Skills.

Prime Minister	Cabinet Minister	New department	Favourite?
Thatcher	Parkinson	Trade & Industry	Yes
Thatcher	Clarke	Health	No
Major	Mellor	National Heritage	Yes
Major	Shepherd	Education & Employment	Yes
Blair	Darling	Work & Pensions	No
Blair	Falconer	Constitutional	Yes
Brown	Balls	Children, Schools & Families	Yes
Brown	E Miliband	Climate Change	Yes
Brown	Denham	Innovation, Universities	No
Brown	Mandelson	Business, Innovation & Skills	Yes

Now, you would expect a Cabinet to have many Prime Ministerial favourites in it, but all the favourites above are clearly the Prime Ministers most prominent supporters; and account for 8 out of the 11 new departmentalk bosses - far more than a coincidence.

Non-replaced GOATS and yet another job for Timms

Both Mark Malloch-Brown and Prof Ali Darzi have now left government, from their posts at Health and Foreign respectively. Neither have been replaced. According to the FCO website, there is no minister responsible for Africa (Malloch-Brown's former beat) and the DoH have got round the issue of Prof Darzi's job by pretending he hasn't left.

Were these jobs that didn't need doing? Or have been completed? Or which only existed because of the willingness of an outsider to lend their reputation to the government? It's quite odd to see ministers leave and not be replaced, not least because of the desire of the whips to be able to offer junior posts to backbench MPs.

Stephen Carter has partially been replaced at Culture & BIS with the announcement that Sion Simon (already at Culture) and Stephen Timms (at the Treasury and adding BIS to his roster) will carry on Carter's work. This makes Timms, with 11 appointments in 11 years, the most travelled and reshuffled minister in this (or I'm fairly certain any other ) government, well in excess of John Reid or Mike O'Brien (the other oft-reshuffled ministers in this government).

How long to remain in a Cabinet

Gordon Brown, Jack Straw and Alastair Darling have been in the Cabinet continuously since 1997. But then there's a leap to find the next longest serving member: Hilary Benn who joined the Cabinet in 1993 (and parliament in 1999 - an ascent only matched or beaten by Balls and the two Milibands). Somehow, everyone else from the original Labour 1997 Cabinet, plus everyone who joined in 1998-2002, fell by the wayside.

Looking at the Major Government, early in his career but 12 years after the Conservatives came to office in May 1979, not a single member of that Cabinet had served continuously since 1979. Tom King and John Wakeham (since 1983), Douglas Hurd (since 1984) and John MacGregor and Kenneth Baker (since 1985) were the longest continuously serving (Heseltine, of course, had clocked up 7 years under Thatcher before his high profile departure and then return).

Towards the end of Major's years, in 1997, the number who'd lasted from the start of his premiership in 1990 (conveniently for these purposes, between 6 and 7 years previously), was quite substantial: Lang, Heseltine, Lilley, MacKay, Clarke, Rifkind, Howard, Waldegrave. Why this greater stability under Major than under Thatcher or the Labour era?

Major didn’t have any of the clear-outs and mass sackings that Brown found himself faced with dealing with in June 09 (4 was the largest number of Cabinet level departures under Major) which, again, lessened the opportunity for a quick turnover in Cabinet places.

Is it that Major was weaker/more consensual than either Blair or Thatcher, so didn’t have the clout to sack (and therefore make enemies) as many?

Or that a generational change occurred within the Cabinet from about 89-92 (with some of the older generation such as Wakeham, Lawson, Howe, Thatcher etc leaving), so that there was less need or potential to refresh the Cabinet?

Or that there were fewer people deemed promotion worthy into Cabinet, as the Conservative government came to an end?

Lack of experience for Defence?

A lot of interest has been made in the lowly status of the new Secretary of State for Defence. This is his first job in Cabinet, and therefore bound to be a but junior in Cabinet.

He’s not alone in being a defence secretary in his first cabinet job. Of his 18 predecessors, from Peter Thorneycroft to John Hutton, 4 of them have made their Cabinet debut in that position. An average ratio for a cabinet post. Denis Healey and George Robertson took the job after their party had been out of office for some time, and after being a ‘big beast’ on their front bench in opposition.

Ian Gilmour had climbed the ladder in defence, from Parliamentary Secretary at the start of Heath’s government to Secretary of State for the last few months of that government, via the MoS post at Defence. Geoff Hoon by contrast had no experience in the Defence department, and his most senior position prior to his first Cabinet post had been 6 months as a minister of State at the Foreign Office.

So Bob Ainsworth may be very inexperienced for the defence post, but he does have the odd rival to be the least experienced, and Geoff Hoon is probably the victor.

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 South Eastern grip on the shadow cabinet

Its no surprise that the shadow cabinet represents constituencies within a small geographical area. The leading lights of the Labour party tend to represent constituencies from the North of England and Scotland; until recently the LibDems leading lights tended to come from their strongholds of the Celtic fringes.

But for the Tories, out of 28 (an extraordinary number given that the Cabinet has a maximum capacity in the low 20s) shadow cabinet members from the Commons:

* Only 2 represent North of England constituencies. That they are the shadow Chancellor and shadow Foreign Secretary; and that the next most northerly (English) member is Ken Clarke means that the North is numerically under-represented in the shadow cabinet (by a huge margin) but has 3 of the 4 senior members of it.

* 4 of the 28 (twice as many as the contingent from the North) represent Surrey, a county of 11 constituencies.

* Every one of the standard regions of Great Britain are represented, except Wales and the North East. By contrast, in the (Labour) Cabinet I can't find anyone from the East Midlands, but every other region is represented. And the LibDems don't have anyone from the West Midlands, East Midlands, or North East, all of which regions they only have one (East Mids and North East) or two (West Mids) representatives

* Only one shadow cabinet member represents a London seat - the Conservatives have 21 of the 74 seats, but just the one representative at their top table - by contrast Labour have 2 and the LibDems 4

* 12 of the 28 are from the most populous region, the South East. This makes the Scottish grip on the Cabinet (4 from 20) seem almost weak.