Of course it's ridiculous that Ed Miliband, having set out a specific vision for the Labour party, was forced to assemble his shadow cabinet from an imposed set of colleagues, some of which he would not previously have given house room.
Diane Abbott, the mother of all faghags
Still, them's the rules. Other matters await decision. Here's one; what is he going to do about Diane Abbott? Cue the bolshie attack from anonymised cyber assassins: "Why should he do anything about Diane Abbott? She ran, she lost fair and square. What about the private school thing?" Etc, etc. Yes, well I know about all that. But what also seems clear is that Diane Abbott has emerged from the leadership campaign a much more substantial figure.
She was never going to win. But by running she did the party a service, saving it from the farce of the all white, all male contest it would have been. There's a heavy postbag there in Hackney North and Stoke Newington but she hit the road and introduced a different dynamic. A baseball coach might say she "took one for the team". Cue the cyber assassins: "She did all right out of it didn't she? Lots of publicity, probably bump up her appearance rates to sit on the sofa with Michael Portillo and Andrew Neil."
Yes, perhaps that's true, but here's a truth: Many who attended the hustings and watched her alongside those generally said to be the "serious candidates" will say that in the early debates, she wiped the floor with them. There they were, all policy wonky and stilted. There she was, a bit plummy perhaps, but clear about how New Labour had detached itself from the party's heartland with its ruinous foreign policies, woeful housing policies and its mania for triangulation.
When the boys seemed willing to flirt with the notion that the core problem was too many immigrants, rather than the party's Mandelsonian neglect of its traditional supporters, Abbott slapped them down. And that's not to say that immigration isn't an issue. It is. But the fifth candidate introduced a crucial sense of proportion.
So what happens now? It is all very well having the Boy King identify hers as a "voice that must be heard" as he did on becoming party leader, but if that really is his wish, Ed ought to do something about it. No shadow cabinet place; that's no surprise, but within his gift must be some form of party role, or a brief capitalising on her experience dealing with social and educational issues in our inner cities. Cue assassins: "You wouldn't be saying all this if she was white. You lot are all in it together. More identity politics."
Well, there is an issue there. You need to see the sort of rapturous reception Abbott gets these days whenever she appears in front of a black or minority ethnic audience. She was the first black candidate (it is said) to run for the leadership of any major party in western Europe. Other minorities may well see that as a significant advance, and a few individuals may think she has swung a door open for them in the future. Someone has to break the mould. Without Jesse Jackson's failures, America might never have embraced Obama as president.
What message will it send if after all she did in the leadership race, contributions acknowledged by the establishment itself, Abbott returns to first base and the party pretends that nothing actually happened? An opportunity is there to be seized – or lost. It's your call, Ed.
Hugh Muir, the Guardian
