Shadow cabinet announced

In the end, mini Mili didn't have the 'cajones' to put either Yvette Cooper OR Ed Balls at shadow chancellor and opted for the safe choice, the popular Alan Johnson. If he can't take the tough decisions in his own party, then the Labour leader will find it very hard to formulate credible opposition to the coalition government.

Old blairites Peter Hain and Shaun Woodward have been snubbed to take up the Wales and N.Ireland briefs respectively. However, one man who is surely out of his depth is Sadiq Khan. Red Ed loyalist, and his campaign manager during the leadership contest, Mr.Khan rose to the lofty 'heights' of Minister of State for Transport during Brown's reign, for 11 months. How this makes him qualified to take on one of the truly big beasts of politics, Ken Clarke, as shadow Lord Chancellor and Justice Secretary, is bewildering. A cynic would say the sniping, briefing and 'boys club' days of the Blair-Brown era were far from over, and that the protagonists have just got younger.