The news that David Cameron is planning to bring experience into his government should the Conservatives win the next election is a good thing to hear. Of the current front bench, only William Hague and Ken Clarke have previously served as Cabinet members, so getting some more experience in a brand new election would enable Cameron to jump right in to doing the job.
However, the problem I can see is that the current front bench have spent a lot of time mastering (or attempting to master) their briefs but then …

Brown really takes it to extremes. There’s bloody loads of them, so many they can’t even fit in the Cabinet room any more!

Images: Downing Street on Flickr

According to BBC News ticker:

Just as Labour are bracing for a disastrous day of election results, it appears the government are going to try and hide all this behind a Cabinet reshuffle – essential now that Jacqui Smith, Hazel Blears, and James Purnell have jumped ship.
This reshuffle has been a disaster from the start for Brown, with these resignations and the little fights about who gets what job – as Darling and Miliband the Older refuse to move “or else” and several others apparently being on the brink of resigning …

… I’d hate to see what Cabinet ministers “hanging Brown out to dry” would look like. Like Steve Green, I don’t think that this can by any means be described as a rally of any sorts around Brown, since it has consisted of

Both Health Secretary Alan Johnson and Justice Secretary Jack Straw defend[ing] the prime minister’s leadership, at the end of a tough week for the government. (BBC)

And that’s all. How many Cabinet members are there? There are 28 ministers who attend Cabinet meetings (excluding Brown himself) and only two …

Most MPs who defraud us make do with just using one home. Cabinet members, it seems, are special and are doing so with two:

Geoff Hoon says he broke no rules in claiming second home allowances for his Derby home while living in a taxpayer-funded apartment in Whitehall.
The transport secretary lived in the flat in Admiralty House while he was defence secretary. He also rented out his own London home while there. (BBC)
Alistair Darling has claimed thousands of pounds in expenses on his family home while renting out his privately owned …

The Cabinet needs to get a grip and focus on doing their jobs. Even their colleagues are saying that they should be – Hazel Blears (aka “the Chipmunk”) and Douglas Alexander making their displeasure clear.
They want the Cabinet to stop in-fighting and jockeying for position over the Labour leadership when he becomes the global financial regulator . But the fact that they are fighting over who should be leader next shows that they understand that they’ve lost the next election – and presume that Gordon Brown will follow recent convention …

Baron Mandelson of Foy in the county of Herefordshire and Hartlepool in the county of Durham, as his official title will be when he takes his seat in the House of Lords, has already been embroiled in yet another scandal:
[Q]uestions are being asked about the extent of his relationship with Russia’s richest man.
In his first week back in British politics, Mr Mandelson has avoided offering a clear account about his contact with Oleg Deripaska, the Russian aluminium oligarch, at a social gathering in Corfu this summer.
Asked ten days ago about …

It seems that I am not the only one to have problems with Lords taking up Cabinet roles – as I wrote in my We The People column this week – that should go to elected representatives. Mark Oaten (remember him?) has tabled an Early Day Motion:

That this House notes the appointment of a new Secretary of State for Business, Enterprise and Regulatory Reform to the House of Lords; further notes that the lead Minister for this Department will therefore not appear in the House of Commons; and calls on …

Last week, Gordon Brown invited Peter Mandelson back from the EU and into his Cabinet. But – hang on! – don’t you have to be a member of Parliament to be a Cabinet minister? Yes, you do. So Mandy is being given a peerage.
Yet why do they need to be in parliament? So that they are answerable to parliament and us. However, when they are sitting in the Lords they’re not directly accountable. We can’t vote them out.
The tendency to appoint Lords to Cabinet positions other than the necessary ones …

Gordon Brown has reshuffled his front bench, as he had to do after losing Ruth Kelly [you can see his first Cabinet here]. It has been described as an “economic war cabinet” to deal with the current economic situation, but seems like really very little important change – after all Alistair Darling remains as Chancellor.
Lots of movement in the lower ranks, but none in the really important positions – Chancellor, Home Secretary, Foreign Secretary, Health, neither Education positions. The two main changes are really Geoff Hoon going to Transport after …