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A new chief of staff for Ed, and other changes

December 21, 2011 2:41 pm

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Big changes are taking place in Ed Miliband’s team before Christmas, as he announced a new Chief of Staff today.

Tim Livesey – a former senior civil servant – has today been confirmed in the role. Sources close to Miliband have described him as a “heavyweight”, and he’s perhaps most notable for working with NATO to shake up the Kosovo operation, as well as being the Archbishop of Canterbury’s Secretary for Public Affairs & Secretary for International Affairs.

Lucy Powell, who has been Miliband’s Acting Chief of Staff since his election as leader will take on the role of Deputy Chief of Staff, with responsibility for political and external relationships, following Livesey’s appointment – the position she had always been intended to hold in the leader’s office.

Although eyebrows may be raised at the timing of these changes, it is believed that they have been planned for some time. Miliband and Powell were said to be wary of appointing a Chief of Staff hastily. Announcing the news, Miliband said:

“Tim has a wealth of knowledge and experience of Whitehall and Westminster.

“He is also someone who brings deep values and commitment to making Britain a fairer, more just country. I look forward to him putting these skills and ideals into practice to help us as an effective Opposition and an alternative to this Government.”

Other potential changes in the new year could involve Miliband’s current Head of News Bob Roberts. He is in the running to be one of the party’s six new “Executive Directors” taking charge of party communications. If he moves to that role, we understand he’d still be working with the leader’s office, and would still be responsible for briefing the lobby. The role of the other senior former newspaper man in Ed’s team – Tom Baldwin – will remain unchanged.

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Anonymous

“He is also someone who brings deep values and commitment to
making Britain a fairer, more just country. I look forward to him
putting these skills and ideals into practice to help us as an effective
Opposition and an alternative to this Government.”Interesting you bring in people who have ideals the leader does not have, should be interesting.
- Anonymous
  
  Hi Robert- I do think those values and ideals were expressed in the conference speech;
  but all of this needs to be articulated more clearly I think.
  
  The problem for me are all the other barriers- like media presentation,
  and the culture of political langauge;I think it needs to be far more direct,
  and perhaps the work they do in constituencies with the public influencing
  policy directly; not becoming a separate culture the minute
  they step into Westminster.
  
  I think Ed has shown sound values, but needs to present himself
  more openly and directly.
  
  Jo
  - Anonymous
    
    We will see in three and a bit years time.l
Anonymous

Am waiting for Miliband to shout “NO” at the prospect of police shooting live rounds at “rioters”. What on earth is he waiting for?
- Anonymous
  
  What on earth is he waiting for?
  
  A lead?
  - Anonymous
    
    would he know what a lead was? ah walking the dog.
    
    All these people coming are all a show so that people will think he has the right people working for him, but he needs help desperately with his speaking.
  - Anonymous
    
    I think Ed is waiting for Liam Byrne and Co., coupled with the latest spate of psephology, polls, and statistical results from focus groups to tell him what to think, be, champion, and believe in. Sadly he seems as much Thatcher’s grandson and Blair’s son as does his elder brother.
    - Anonymous
      
      Shooting rioters with real live guns is a crazy idea.. so to be fair to him, maybe he thinks it not worth discussing. (Probably correctly )
- BingBong
  
  If a rioter is threatening someone’s life then the police, or indeed anyone else, can take proportionate measure to stop them.
  This comes from article 51 of the UN Convention, the inherent right to self-defence which can be extended to a third party and includes pre-emptive self defence, e.g. you don’t have to wait for someone to stab you before hitting them with a baseball bat.
  Or would you rather the only option available if you see someone about to throw Molotov cocktails at a building with people in is to shout ‘Oi No!’? That’s the situation being discussed, not indiscriminate live firing into a crowd.
  
  Rubber bullets and water cannons are a separate issue to be discussed on their own merit. However they could be considered a proportionate response if life was threatened.
  
  As I understand it anyone could use proportionate force to stop rioters firebombing an occupied building. Proportionate force is whatever you feel is the minimum you can use to stop the life threatening action with least danger to yourself. Personally if I was in a building about to be firebombed I’d be quite happy for the police to shoot or indeed to do it myself, I’m too pretty to die.
  
  Essentially all HM Inspectorate of Constabulary have done is restate the existing law, which is applicable due to us signing up to the UN.
- GuyM
  
  As I understand it the plan was to shoot at arsonists etc. whose action posed a threat to life.
  
  It seems very fair to me. If you are trying to set fire to a building when you have no idea who is in it then getting a bullet or two is just deserts.
  - jaime taurosangastre candelas
    
    GuyM,
    
    I couldn’t disagree more on your “solution” (i.e. live bullets), although I’m in full agreement that the “problem” you describe – people setting light to buildings – is completely unacceptable. There are other means of achieving the same end – buildings not burned and lives not at risk – than by simply shooting someone.
    
    One of the crowning glories of this country is the rule of law, and part of that is our public police force, their restraint and neutrality. I’ve lived in a country where for a while the police made no pretence of neutrality and relished taking a position of meting out summary “justice”. It’s awful, it’s divisive, it makes the citizen feel second class. I once got hit with a baton across my jaw, not for doing anything, but for being slow in getting out my ID papers for a random street check, and myself and my friends were standing quietly in a line. I was 13 at the time. My father and mother were taken in for questioning probably for only being residents of a certain street; my father came back with a broken wrist and my mother will not talk about her experience.
    
    To be practical, there are other non-lethal means of stopping rioters than shooting them, and any non-lethal measure must to me be by definition preferable to gunfire. Anything from water-cannon, tasers, tear gas, rubber bullets, even microwaves to cause discomfort or high pitched noises. None of them are in any way “nice”, all could be misapplied and could become tools of repression, but let me tell you, I would far rather live in a country where a rioter has the ability to pursue the police in court for wrongful actions than be buried because he or she was gunned down by a policeman acting as judge, jury and executioner.
    
    You may argue that in certain circumstances – e.g. terrorism, Jean Charles de Menezes etc – there is no time, and that may be right or wrong and in any case is an absolutely tiny amount of cases. But we are talking rioting here, mass participation, and clearly different from a suicide bomber.
    - GuyM
      
      Personally if I could click my fingers and send all the rioting and underclass criminal scum that looted in August into non existence I would Jaime.
      
      There is no value to any of them and they deserve no sympathy.
      - Daniel Speight
        
        A riot is the language of the unheard. Martin Luther King.
        
        Nothing much changes. Didn’t GuyM declare class war on behalf of the middle class yesterday. Doesn’t look like he’s taking any prisoners.
      - GuyM
        
        Nope, no prisoners at all.
        
        75% of rioters in the summer had criminal records, some loads of convictions.
        
        They were invariably nothing more than scum who had never worked at school or afterwards, bitching about how life wouldn’t give them the same as the “rich” but not prepared to work for it.
        
        I can see no use to me in their existence, none at all and I’d gladly be rid of them all.
      - jaime taurosangastre candelas
        
        @ GuyM,
        
        I’m sad about that view. I think we all know you here on LL to be trenchant in your views, some of which in relation to personal responsibility and the natural boundaries of the state I have some sympathy with. But your reply above does read as though you support a Stalinist or Hitler-type approach to justice, and I cannot agree with that. I’m sorry if that miscategorises your real thoughts, but that is the way I read your “non-existence” phrase.
      - GuyM
        
        Not at all Jaime, I support the rule of law.
        
        However when people take actions that put other’s lives in danger I believe they lose all rights to “human rights” themselves.
        
        5 people died in the riots, I’d far rather it was 5 rioters shot than 5 innocent members of the public.
        
        Once you ahve someone caught then I’m 100% against capital punishment etc. but whilst they pose a threat to others then all force necessary is fine with me.
        
        I really have no liking for the sorts of underclass feral youth who were predominatly involved in the riots. I have no sympathy for them at all and i fail to see why I or anyone else should. They live in a fre country and made their choices of their own accord, hence hte responsibility for the consequences they face is theirs and theirs alone
  - Anonymous
    
    yet totally agree lets shoot people who carry weapons like water, cola because you will have Police officers saying it looked like a petrol bomb to me, look at this bottle just laying here on the floor.
    
    Bit like he had a gun oh look here is one.
  - Anonymous
    
    Fair enough, but it’s not an isolated system. What of the wider consequences?
    
    Start shooting people and the chances are some of them will decide to start shooting back.
Anonymous

Sounds very positive and hopeful, although I don’t know what these roles entail?

I liked the bit about “deep values and commitment,” but would like to hear
much more detail on policy next year.

It sounds like Ed is putting things into a new gear, and that’s good.

Jo
Only me

Perhaps Ed and his Ex Archbishop guy share the Bish’s views on helping the disabled and chronically sick Now under attack in ways reminiscent of the propaganda of pre war you no where. Ed, we know you now what is happening – do something about it.
The disabled are fighting to redress the hysterical media attacks promoted by government – you should speak up or lose millions of votes. The disabled are getting organised and the fight back has begun

http://diaryofabenefitscrounger.blogspot.com/

Don’t be on the wrong side of history.

Labour MPs – please sign EDM 2416 – re stopping the farce that is the ESA assessments. It was started by a Tory, for God’s sake.
Sandfhoy

The Archbishop of Canterbury’s former spin doctor a “heavyweight”? Hyperbole, surely.
Daniel Speight

If it were only administration and organizational changes that he needs he could quickly help himself by dumping Baldwin.
http://pulse.yahoo.com/_MCHMWHXOWHZGAMD2YHT36LW2LY Alan Giles

All this seems like tinkering round the edges. Covering up the cracks with another layer of wallpaper. At the end of the day it will make virtually no difference to anyones perception or opinion.

What is really needed is for the voices of the past (Mandelson, Blunkett) to just shut up and for Labour to stop trying to be the Conservative party, and for malcontents like Paul Richards to stop pouring scorn on genuine Labour figures of the past, just to promote the latest Blair robot, or Tory-Labour idea
- Anonymous
  
  I think you are being unkind.
  
  Labour has three choices:
  
  1. go back to its roots.. old fashioned socialism for the working classes. Tax the rich. Nationalise.
  Assessment: failed policies rooted in the 1960s. No chance of winning anything.
  
  2. Keep on with New Labour…
  Assessment: failed policies , tax and spend , too much baggage. But 35% + of the electorate will vote for them. Some appeal.
  
  3. Reinvent itself: Sensible economic policies, new thinking on welfare state, connect with normal people.
  Assessment: very difficult to do without alienating part of your core vote . Economic policies as they stand are just not credible.
  
  Ed’s trying to steer a path between all three. They are mutually incompatible. There are personalities who will lose big time from a successful third course . It requires time o change - individuals as well as policies.. like a decade?
  
  It’s a thankless job even for a great Leader..
  - James
    
    you’re right madasfish but Labours problems go a little further. What was once the party of the “working man” is no longer, it appears to the outside observer to be split into two distinct parts. 1) the PLP who seem to come from the same background as the Tories they endlessly condemn that of private education, Oxbridge, etc professional politicians with little experience of life outside the political bubble who consider themselves a left leaning elite and 2) the client state. Those areas that still have strong support for the Labour party are in the main areas where daily life is dependant on the state either in the form of benefits or some public sector funded job.
    The idea that there is some progressive majority is false and for Labour to have mass appeal once more it needs more than a simplistic lurch to the left, Blair, though i loathed him did seem to understand this and until the wider labour movement do too you ill be doomed to opposition.
  - Anonymous
    
    With respect, the problem is there are still people high up in Labour who genuinely think that people like Blunkett, David Miliband and Ed Balls are the future, when in truth they are part of a diiscredited past. D Miliband is closely associated with Iraq and has been reported as wanting to tak on Iran. Ed Balls, after the Independent article yesterday I just cannot take seriously, and as for Blunkett and his peccadilloes, he is but one reminder of the hypocrisy of the little band who were going to be “purer than pure”.
    
    Ed Miliband certainly should be his own man and try to stop pleasing everybody. But you get this horrible sense that the likes of Balls and Ed’s brother are just waiting for him to fail so that they can return to 1997.
    
    Paul Richards said last week he didn’t want to go back to the 80s. I don’t want to go back to 1997-2007 – it stinks too much
Anonymous

Adds another dimension to the team in what will be a crucial year to challenge this Tory led Government.
Anonymous

Of course if people know they are to be shot then of course they may decide to shoot back and we will end up with riots in which hundreds would die and the riots would spread, nope guns never work ask the people in my town what occurred in 1911 when people were shot and killed and the 1911 riots.
- BingBong
  
  So you’re saying the Police should let people commit manslaughter rather than shoot them, in case they shoot back? I don’t know about you but if someone was firebombing the building I was in I’d be happy for the Police to shoot them, rather than die to prevent a theoretical escalation of hostilities.
  
  Now I’m not saying the Police should indiscriminately open fire on looters, and neither is anyone else, all they’re doing is re-stating the legal position with regard to the option of using lethal force to protect the lives of innocent third parties if that’s the only option.
  
  Water cannons and rubber bullets may be preferable but as they weren’t available on the UK mainland and may well still not be, that’s the decision that has to be made, i.e. if people lives are at threat from rioters do you a) let them die, or b) shoot the people who’re going to kill them.
  So which choice would you make?

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