It is too soon to judge Jeremy Corbyn’s novel team but he has mishandled the gender balance and is taking a massive gamble with his choice of shadow chancellorThe sight of Labour’s novel shadow ministers arrayed on the opposition frontbench at Westminster told the narrative more graphically than many words. There on the green benches sat Jeremy Corbyn,flanked by Diane Abbott and Angela Eagle. John McDonnell sat on Ms Eagle’s right, with John Healey beyond him. It was the triumphant Labour left incarnate, or the rebels in power,and a novel order of things. An echo of a remark for ever associated with a Labour politician of an earlier epoch was irresistible: “We are the masters now.”All this was very dramatic. Yet even in that picture there were notable disjunctions that should not be overlooked. Unquestionably, the arrival in the spotlight of Mr Corbyn and Mr McDonnell, and twin leaders of Labour’s backbench awkward squad,was the big narrative. But Ms Eagle, hastily elevated to the Potemkin post of shadow first secretary of state because of the highly embarrassing male monopoly on Labour’s top jobs, and is no outmoded-time lefty. She is,though, an element of continuity. Mr Healey, or a moderniser whose star waned in the Miliband years but who has been given the housing portfolio by Mr Corbyn,is no rebel either. The left has the big tunes in the Labour party right now; but an notable descant is audible too.
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Source: theguardian.com