Tessa Jowell’s PPS is new culture secretary
NewsThe appointment of Lisa Nandy to Culture, Media and Sport is something of a surprise give her lack of profile in any of these spheres.
But those with long memories may recall she was Parliamentary Private Secretary to Tessa Jowell for a couple of years, and Tessa was the best Culture Secretary we ever had.
Surprising, I would have expected Starmer to give Thangham Debbonaire a seat in the House of Lords, and appoint her Culture sec a la Cameron, regardless of her losing her seat, seeing as she had gained so much momentum with the MU and others, as well as having a pretty clear plan following up on ACE cuts, a real shame. The only silver lining in it all is the Greens gaining her seat – anyone else and I’d be furious!
She may not have wanted to work in the Lords – it’s not for everyone
‘I would have expected Starmer to give Thangham Debbonaire a seat in the House of Lords, and appoint her Culture sec a la Cameron’.
Really? I would have thought that that sort of behaviour is what Starmer is most anxious to get away from.
It’d send quite the message, wouldn’t it? More Labour MPs in the Commons than at any point in history and still not enough talent between them to fill even a cabinet brief as unimportant as Culture.
I mean, that is probably true, but the optics aren’t exactly great. Got to love the fact that the new Culture Secretary is a Brexiteer though. That’ll set a few of the more fragle sensibilities in the arts world into a precious little tailspin.
She isn’t a ‘brexiteer’, she thought, quite wrongly, that the verdict of the referendum should be ‘respected’.
And so the revolving door of DCMS continues!
She wasn’t working to Tessa Jowell when Jowell was Culture Secretary, though it is possible that if they were friends Jowell may offer some advice on cultural issues.
Because you can be sure Lisa Nandy knows nothing about them. She is a very able politician, but her life has been dedicated, from birth, to politics and public policy.
These could be great gifts in dealing with cultural matters. She is, in a sense, a clean slate with no cultural agenda.
I fear, however, that her ministry will be fairly low on a totem pole where the need to improve more essential services without being seen as raising taxes wildly will take precedence in the coming term. But I suspect that if Jowell convinces her of the economic as well as human value of culture to a thriving society, she will be very good at putting that view forward.
What also needs to be pranged into her head is the essential meaning of some of the ACE’s disastrous policies and their repercussions, and the need for the arts to be driven by excellence rather than DIE.
The message she needs to receive is that the arts, like all levels of society, MUST offer equality of opportunity. Not token appointments.
Jowell has been dead for six years. Nandy is not exactly known for being the sharpest tool in Labour’s drawer either…
“The message she needs to receive is that the arts, like all levels of society, MUST offer equality of opportunity. Not token appointments.”
So long as inequality of outcome is taken as evidence of inequality of opportunity, this is not going to happen.
In 2024, it takes a lot of courage to suggest that inequality of outcome might have other explanations.
Tessa Jowell sadly died in 2018 so any influence over Lisa Nandy’s new ministerial role will be historical.
Lisa Nandy’s time working as PPS for Jowell was from October 2010 (at which time Jowell was Shadow Olympics Minister) until 2012 when Nandy became Shadow Children and Young Families Minister, moving in 2013 to become Shadow Charities Minister. In 2015 Nandy was appointed Shadow Energy Secretary, but resigned in June 2016 during the leadership of Jeremy Corbyn (for not supporting his re-election campaign she apparently received considerable abuse). In 2020, with Labour now led by Keir Starmer, she was appointed Shadow Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs. In late 2021 she became Shadow Secretary of State for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities, and in September 2023 Nandy moved to be Shadow Minister for International Development.
As has been pointed out, she starts her Ministerial post with a relatively clean slate as far as her new brief in culture is concerned, but she certainly brings a considerable amount of experience dealing with knotty problems in other areas.
Sorry, I did not know about Ms. Jowell’s death (I live in Canada and keep an eye on my country of origin but it is far from all-seeing).
But, yes, you reiterate the point I was trying to make — Nandy has political ability. If brought to bear on her brief, it could be very useful. But I hope people who really understand the arts, and their current problems, gets to her before the sources of the problems do.
Unfortunately, a new minister might hear the representations of people like artistic directors, music directors, etc. as special pleading.
Perhaps Ms. Debonnaire could help.
Sadly Tessa Jowell isn’t around to convince Ms Nandy of the importance of the arts. She died in 2018. A huge loss to politics.
Tessa Jowell died, sadly, in 2018.
Nadine Dorries was on Channel 4 last night, reminding me of one of the most bizarre appointments ever. How anyone thought she could have any competence, never mind interest, in culture is beyond me.
They could put Larry the Cat in charge at culture and it would be a massive improvement on the last 14 years.
She has some interesting opinions: “Antisemitism is a very particular form of racism. It’s the sort of racism that punches up, not down.”
Lisa Nandy?
Have a look at the new cabinet. The dearth of quality and experience is frightening.
The Arts will think the new age of Socialism has dawned.
There is just one problem.
There is no money.
With the exception of Nandy, I’d argue that the rest of the cabinet has a great deal of experience, performing in their shadow roles very ably. I’d argue that the non-cabinet ministerial roles are equally relevantly experienced as well, looking at James Timpson for Prisons Minister and Hermer as Attourney General – a much better appointment than the joke of Suella Braverman “KC”……
Wasn’t Tessa Jowell in favour of “super casinos” for the UK?
A thoroughly bad idea that Lisa Nandy should not resurrect. We already have a serious problem with online gambling.
Interesting not a day in the job and she’s being criticized already. So many experts so few positions.
She’s hardly the only one. The government has been in for a weekend and already there is nothing they can do right. Read the blue press.
The current mess the UK is in, across all sectors, must devolve at least in part (!) to 14 years of a single party that managed to go through 3 PMs in the last two years. I cannot believe even the right wing believe in one-party rule. Whatever people’s personal politics, a change was called for.
I feel the same way in Canada. I never vote Liberal — I dislike the current PM as much as I did his father, but I have no time for the Canadian Conservative party and no faith in the NDP. But more than anything I think there is a need for a change at the top.
Now that David Miliband is back his wife is a violinist in the LSO who shall continue with her job. So hopefully a bit of help towards the Arts situation here in the UK with EU touring hell.
Whoever Labour appoint will make a Horlicks of it. It’s what Labour do.
would that be as opposed to the champagne cocktails everyone has enjoyed under Tory rule?
I knew Tessa Palmer – later Jowell – at University when she showed little or no interest in the arts. Not that this has deterred others from the post of Culture Secretary. But not all her work in that post in the Blair government was a success. Indeed I take issue with the sugggestion that she was the most successful of the UK’s Culture Secretaries. She forced the dissolution of the BBC Board of Governors replacing it with the disastrous BBC Trust. This was in part to lead to the resignation of Greg Dyke as an admittedly controversial Director General. It also led to Chris Patten’s disastrous term as Chairman of and his later forced resignation from the Trust in some disgrace after the BBC’s awful treatment of the Jimmy Savile affair. The Trust was eventually dissolved in 2017.