The following have been elected to the Shadow Cabinet:

Douglas Alexander
Ed Balls
Hilary Benn
Andy Burnham
Liam Byrne
Yvette Cooper
Mary Creagh
John Denham
Angela Eagle
Maria Eagle
Caroline Flint
John Healey
Meg Hillier
Alan Johnson
Tessa Jowell
Sadiq Khan
Ivan Lewis
Ann McKechin
Jim Murphy

They join the following Labour MPs and Peers who are already members of the Shadow Cabinet:

Ed Miliband MP, Leader of the Labour Party
Harriet Harman MP, Deputy Leader of the Labour Party
Tony Lloyd MP, Chair of the Parliamentary Labour Party
Rosie Winterton MP, Labour’s Chief Whip
Baroness Jan Royall, Shadow Leader of the House of Lords
Lord Steve Bassam, Labour’s Chief Whip in the House of Lords

UPDATE : Blog favourites Ben Bradshaw, Peter Hain and Chris Bryant out. Oh well, we still have Sadiq Khan…

Breaking : A judge has this evening  found for Les Cumming, who was injuncted by the controversial LibDem MP Mike Hancock, after making allegations of sexual impropriety against “Handycock”. The judge struck out Hancock’s claim completely, criticising his legal team in no uncertain terms. Hancock was also ordered to pay £5,000 legal costs. More to follow…

Things must be really bad for “rising star” Chris Bryant. The Labour wannabe attack dog has reverted to writing cringing anti-coalition poetry…

But now the champagne flutes are passed their time -
And late-night, lightweight, internecine strife.
The autumn parliamentary term commences
With all eyes fixed on Osborne’s pending knife.
Statistics, figures, numbers stride the land,
Brought forth by each to stay the other’s hand.
Some worship at the shrine of deficit reduction,
They see a chance to slash the state, scot-free,
They eulogise the Big Society
But in their hearts they make a grand deduction:
Let Alexander, Clegg and Cable take the rap.

There is more, much more here. Though Bryant might not even make it to the Shad Cab, Guido wouldn’t recommend he gives up the day job…

Latest odds here.

UPDATE 16.45 : Yvette now favourite to be Shadow Chancellor.

Iain Martin advises Ed Miliband that…

“Subverting Lyndon Johnson’s famous rule, keeping Ed Balls inside the tent makes no difference – he’ll probably still urinate on his colleagues.”

On Tuesday’s Newsnight Paxman asked the audience of grassroots party members if any of them thought the child benefit announcement had been handled well. Only one person put their hand up to defend the Government…

But who was this  loyal grassroots member? Well none other than Richard John, a party staffer and recently appointed Head of Communications for the Welsh Conservatives. The only person who would defend the handling of the announcement was being paid to do so. Apparently he was spinning away on Monday’s show as well. Would the BBC class Andy Coulson as a “grass-roots member” too?

Having kept an extremely low profile for the conference, Andy Coulson was finally seen with a smile on his face at the News International party on Tuesday night. At home with his old Murdoch comrades, one co-conspirator described him as looking like a lost schoolboy reunited with his family. But how long will the smiles last? Coulson’s inter-governmental nemesis Steve Hilton seems to be winning the No.10 power struggle at the moment, with Cameron’s conference speech rehashing back Hilton’s “Big Society” message. While Coulson was keeping his head down after Peter Oborne’s Dispatches blunt hatchet job, Steve was spotted having a quiet curry with the former Deputy Editor of the Indy Ian Birrell…

Birrell who was called on to sharpen up Cameron’s speeches in the election campaign is of the Hilton blue-sky persuasion and Guido can’t think what he might have been discussing. If Coulson were to be forced out by a smoking gun, a huge power vacuum would be created in government and there is no way Hilton wouldn’t want one of his own to fill it…

The Labour Party’s “greasy pole” was slammed on Radio 5 this morning by a self-proclaimed “climber of the greasy pole”, Jack Straw. It seems the old timer is getting grumpy on the way out and is less than impressed with the system of electing the Shadow Cabinet:

“… if you are in the shadow cabinet it is elected, I, from a position of complete neutrality, said to my colleagues, I survived and prospered under this system for ten years, but I just tell you, it is barking mad, for arithmetical reasons as well, it is a daft system, and what it means is that of the eighteen or nineteen people in shadow cabinet, probably a dozen capable of being in the Cabinet, half a dozen are not and if and when we have a Labour government some of those who thought this is a meal ticket in to the proper Cabinet will be sorely disappointed.”

The presenter Nicky Campbell interrupted to ask whether Straw would come back on Monday and let the public know who the half-dozen unsuitable members are. Funnily enough the answer was “errrr no”.

Low down the pecking order contest is getting vicious and the rules governing how many women are elected could hurt the likes of Bryant, Bradshaw and Harris. According to punters over at Smarkets at the top Burnham and Khan are vying for the Home Office. There is still no clear frontrunner for the FCO shadow, but Balls is still the favourite for Shadow Chancellor, just, his wife isn’t far behind. By this time tomorrow we shall know whether Labour are opening up yet another family drama narrative…

It was a humorous anecdote, Guido thinks, but middle-class children do have a lot of teeth and their Tooth-Fairies are quite generous. You never know…

Via : Political Scrapbook

YouGov asked people the following question: “In principle, do you support or oppose limiting child benefit so that people with high incomes do not receive it?” 83% supported the principle.

Yet if you read the press yesterday you’d think there was outrage in the country. Couldn’t be anything to do with the fact that London’s media elite who write the headlines all earn over £44,000.

Surely not?