Ed and Yvette?
Given my last blog posting, I can’t hardly complain about the outcome of Labour’s leadership election.
Now it’ll be interesting to see who Ed Miliband will pick as shadow chancellor.
There are rumours that he wants to give this post to his brother to ensure he doesn’t turn his back on the party, but I think it’d be hard to do what you want to do if the person who nearly won the leadership is your right-hand man – Blair and Brown tried this formula and failed.
Ed Balls would be a possibility, of course, but he hasn’t so far shown many signs that he can distance himself from the errors of the Brown era.
So who would be the best shadow chancellor?
I think the most obvious person is Yvette Cooper. She knows the brief, and Ed Balls would find it hard to undermine her, given that he’s her husband. Also, she didn’t run for the leadership election, so there are no bruises.