An excellent appointment

By Don Paskini

According to a ‘Number 10 insider’ in the Times, Kirsty McNeill has been appointed as a senior adviser to the Prime Minister.

The Times report went on about how Kirsty used to be a student activist, and ten years ago didn’t agree with some of Tony Blair’s policies. Not mentioned, but perhaps of more relevance, is what Kirsty’s done in, say, the past five years.

As an activist, she helped run the ‘Make Poverty History‘ campaign, posssibly the most successful leftie grassroots campaigns of the past decade. As a campaigner, she achieved one of the biggest swings to Labour when she stood as a parliamentary candidate at the last General Election, and managed to win election as a local councillor in 2006 when Labour was getting wiped out in London.

And professionally, she’s possibly the only person currently working in number 10 who got praised by the Daily Mail for the quality of her work. There’s not many people currently involved in politics who can claim any one of those achievements, let alone all four.

Apparently her appointment has ‘ruffled a few feathers’, according to people who think they are helping Labour by gossiping and whining in right-wing newspapers. If Gordon Brown listens a bit less to them, and a bit more to Kirsty, I think that it sounds like a great appointment.