Election catch-up: who would be Foreign Secretary in a Labour government?

1. If Douglas Alexander were to lose his seat, and if Ed Miliband were to become prime minister, who would be Foreign Secretary?

Alexander’s seat, Paisley and Renfrewshire South, hasn’t even made the list of possible Labour holds in May2015.com’s analysis of Scotland. (Which raises, incidentally, the possibility that betting on the Lib Dems to win more seats than Labour in Scotland might be good value.)

Alexander is Chair of Labour’s Election Strategy and shadow Foreign Secretary. Naturally, my thoughts, after commiserating with him, one of the best brains in the shadow cabinet, turn to who could replace him as Foreign Secretary if there is a Labour government.

Mary Creagh could step up from shadowing International Development, or Emma Reynolds, who was shadow Europe minister, could be promoted although she is not even a full member of the shadow cabinet. Pat McFadden, current shadow Europe minister, is no 2 in Alexander’s team.

I suspect Miliband would be more likely to go for someone more senior. Yvette Cooper would say no, I suspect (she didn’t enjoy her brief stint shadowing the job at the start of Miliband’s leadership), and she’s pretty unsackable. Tristram Hunt would probably do it well. That could also solve another problem, by moving Andy Burnham to Education, and promoting Liz Kendall to Health Secretary.

But the best option would be to bring back Alan Johnson, who betrayed the country, his party and himself by refusing to try to be prime minister, but who still has one more big job in him.

2. Of course, if Alexander were to lose his seat and Miliband to fail to become prime minister, none of this matters. Dan Hodges thinks Peter Kellner and I have fallen victim to the mid-campaign virus of thinking Miliband has won, when nothing has in fact changed.

The flaw in his reasoning is that no change was not expected. I thought the opinion polls would have started to move the Tories’ way by now. On average, there has been a swing back to the government as the election approaches. It hasn’t happened, which is why I now think there is a 60 per cent chance that Miliband will be prime minister.

3. Most of that 60 per cent probability is covered by a situation in which a minority Labour government is propped up by the Scottish National Party. A lot of rot is talked about the “legitimacy” of such an arrangement. Alex Massie wrote brilliantly about this yesterday.

4. Professor Robert Tombs, author of the magnificent The English and Their History, has a good article in the forthcoming New Statesman in which he defends today’s political class as “harder-working, more professional and more accountable than at any time in the past”, and says that the rise of Scottish nationalism is a challenge and may even be a crisis, but separation “would undoubtedly be less traumatic than the independence of Ireland in 1921, something that most people in England have probably forgotten”.

5. Lovely picture from one of the 1910 elections, to which this one has been compared, because of the deadlock caused by Irish nationalists holding the balance of power. Note the Daily Mail poster in the middle (bigger picture here): “Tax the Foreigner ... And Protect the Flag.” Thanks again to Alex Massie.

open image in gallery

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6. And finally, thanks to Andrew Denny for this:

“I’m told I’m making heavy weather of my anagramming. Yeah, whatever.”