James Forsyth

Kezia Dugdale, the deputy leader of the Scottish Labour party, has announced that she’s running for the leadership of the Scottish party following Jim Murphy’s resignation. With Murphy not being an MSP, it has fallen to Dugdale to take on Nicola Sturgeon at First Minister’s Questions. She is generally thought to have done a good job at it, highlighting the SNP’s poor record on education. But in the current political climate in Scotland, it is highly unlikely that Labour will be able to deny the SNP a majority at next year’s Holyrood elections. So, the risk that Dugdale—who is only 33—is taking in running is relying on the Scottish Labour party not to immediately jettison its leader post-defeat in 2016.

As British politics becomes more presidential, the structure of Number 10 matters more and more. David Cameron values continuity, collegiality and calmness in his senior team and what is striking is how many of his team are staying on post-election. The word coming out of Downing Street today is that Ed Llewellyn will remain as chief of staff in this parliament. But Llewellyn will also be the Prime Minister’s point person on the EU renegotiation, a hugely time consuming task. Number 10 is emphasising that the two deputy chiefs of staff, Craig Oliver and Kate Fall will be taking on more responsibilities to ensure the efficient running of the Cameron operation when Llewellyn is absent. Oliver becomes the Political and Communications director.

Wolfgang Schäuble’s decision to link the British renegotiation to changes to the governance of the Eurozone is highly significant. In an interview the German Finance Minister told the Wall Street Journal that he has discussed George Osborne ‘coming to Berlin so that we can think together about how we can combine the British position with the urgent need for a strengthened governance of the eurozone’. Schäuble went on to say that ‘the structure of this currency union will stay fragile as long as its governance isn’t substantially reinforced. Maybe there is a chance to combine both goals’. Schäuble’s comments are the most encouragement that the government has had on the renegotiation front.

Any new party leader needs legitimacy, an acceptance that they won the contest fair and square. Ed Miliband didn’t have this because he lost in two of three sections of Labour’s electoral-college and that meant he couldn’t act decisively in his first 100 days, that crucial period in which the public tend to decide whether a party leader is much cop or not. The worry for Labour is that the next leader might not be seen by some in the party as legitimate either. There are two reasons for this. First of all there is already unease about the tactics that the frontrunners are using to try and keep challengers off the ballot paper, see this story from Patrick Wintour of the Guardian.

Michael Gove has been keeping a relatively low profile since being made Justice Secretary and Lord Chancellor last weekend. I understand that he is keen to master the brief, and particularly the complexities around the creation of a British Bill of Rights, before he starts hitting the TV studios. But an address he gave to staff at the Ministry of Justice on Wednesday gives some clues as to the direction he is heading in. Interestingly Gove didn’t simply declare that the Tories would be scrapping the Human Rights Act. Instead, he said, ‘We’ll be seeking to ensure that human rights are enhanced and preserved by modernising and reforming the framework of rights in this country’.

George Osborne has moved to strengthen his personal, political operation by hiring the political editor of the Daily Mail James Chapman as his director of communications. This beefing up of his media team will be seen in Westminster as a statement of political intent by the Chancellor; it gives him a more formidable operation than any of the other likely contenders for the Tory leadership. I am told that Chapman will be handling communications for Osborne in his role as both Chancellor and First Secretary of State.

The chaos in Ukip and the Labour leadership race has allowed Number 10 to quietly finish off the task of constructing a new government without too much attention. The distribution of ministerial posts has gone down as well as can be expected. Enough people have been brought back and rebels brought in to give most MPs hope, which is one of the main purposes of reshuffles. Today’s appointments are particularly astute. The economist and former Goldman Sachs banker Jim O’Neill becomes a Lord and the Treasury minister in charge of city deals, which should ensure that George Osborne’s northern powerhouse continues to move forward.

In 2012, Steve Hilton quit his role as David Cameron’s senior adviser in frustration at the compromises of coalition and the slow pace of reform. Since then, he has maintained an almost total vow of silence on British politics. He had no desire to say anything that could be turned into a tricky headline for the Tories. But with the Tories having won the election—and with a majority—Hilton is dipping his toe back in the British political water. As well as doing various events to promote his new book More Human, he is also joining the Cameroon think tank Policy Exchange as a visiting scholar.

One of George Osborne’s political skills is his ability to put together a talented team. Few politicians spend longer thinking about who to have working for them. But post-election, Osborne is going to need to reshuffle his own, personal operation. For Rupert Harrison, his able economic adviser is off and now, I learn, that his press secretary Ramesh Chhabra is leaving too. It is no surprise that they are going now, the Treasury team has been on the political front-line pretty much every day for the past five years. Osborne poached Chhabra seven years ago when his boss David Davis resigned. Since then Chhabra has worked tirelessly on Osborne’s behalf. The good print press that the Chancellor has received in recent years is down, in large part, to Chhabra’s work.

The party chairman in a general election winning campaign can normally expect a plum job as a reward, especially when that victory was against the odds. Tonight, though, Grant Shapps finds himself not in the Cabinet but a Minister of State at the Department of International Development. Shapps’ treatment is, at first, puzzling. After all, the Team 2015 network that he created appears to have done a decent job in neutralising the supposed advantage that Labour’s ground operation was meant to give it But those around the Tory leader, say that David Cameron simply became fed up with the odd allegations that kept popping up about Shapps. So, the fairness—or otherwise—of his treatment depends on whether these stories are true or not.

Since Labour’s election defeat, there has been a lot of chat about how Dan Jarvis could be the man to revive the party. The argument went that Jarvis, a former officer in the Paras who commanded troops in Afghanistan, was just what the party needed to make voters take a second look at it. But in a piece in The Times today, he rules himself out of the contest on the grounds that he has to put his children first. He writes, ‘My eldest kids had a very tough time when they lost their mum and I don’t want them to lose their dad. I need some space for them, my wife and our youngest child right now, and I wouldn’t have it as leader.’ But Jarvis is clear about what Labour’s problems are.

Michael Gove is the new Justice Secretary and Lord Chancellor, Downing Street has just announced. Chris Grayling will move to become Leader of the House. Number 10 is also confirming that, as David Cameron promised during the election campaign, Nicky Morgan will continue as Education Secretary. Becoming Justice Secretary marks a return to Gove running a big department after his service as chief whip in the run up to the general election. I suspect that there will be two things that Gove concentrates on. First, sorting out Britain’s relationship with the ECHR. Grayling had already committed the Tories to withdrawing from the Convention if parliament and courts here could not veto a judgement from the European Court of Human Rights applying in this country.

David Cameron has reappointed several of the most senior members of the government. George Osborne stays as Chancellor, Theresa May remains Home Secretary, Philip Hammond Foreign Secretary and Michael Fallon Defence Secretary. Indeed, the only change is Osborne taking over William Hague’s old First Secretary of State title. This is formal recognition that Osborne will, in effect, be the deputy Prime Minister of this Tory majority government. We are told to expect the rest of the reshuffle on Monday. There’ll be particular interest in who Cameron chooses to be his chief whip, a role that takes on particular importance with this small majority.