Margaret Beckett: New Housing Minister

Good news about Margaret Beckett being appointed as Housing Minister. There has been some understandable moans in the housing press about the “churn” in housing ministers (she is the 8th Labour minister and there has been 3 in the last year alone!).

However, she is a big hitter – former deputy leader of the Labour party (the technical leader for 3 months when John Smith died), and former Foreign Secretary, Environment secretary etc. She has even the rare experience of having served as a minister in the Wilson and Callaghan governments.

Margaret (who I do not personally know) is a “serious person for serious times" (says our Gordon).

Housing is nowadays rightly a key (and serious) issue and her appointment will bring it further up the political agenda.

This is more evidence to me anyway of a subtle change by the PM. He has brought back into the government people who are not his natural supporters but are talented and are much needed to get us into shape for the coming general election. Peter Mandelson is the other far more controversial example.

Margaret is loyal, has good links and associations with traditional Labour and is a safe pair of hands as well as being a first-class media performer.

Given her trade union background I am also looking forward to the housing unions (UNISON and Unite) having good access to her department - “fairness not favours” of course.

I couldn’t resist using the cartoon above by the Guardian cartoonist, Martin Rowson, for this post – but I think that the deeply unpleasant sniggering and snide comments made about Margaret’s love of caravanning is a symptom of what you get when the nation’s self appointed elite are so detached from reality, that they think a fortnight in a Devon caravan park is somehow beneath them.

No wonder so many of them had equally deranged beliefs about the ability of the "market" to self regulate and to deal with the corrupt and dishonest so-called "masters of the financial universe". So who’s sniggering now I suppose?

(Out a sense of blogger loyalty I must say it was a shame that rail minister Tom Harris lost his job – may I say that I'm sure it is only a timetabling problem).