Purnell lined up for prime role

May 18 2008 by Matt Withers, Wales On Sunday

JAMES Purnell. He may not be a household name yet, but remember him – because some influential people think he could well be the next leader of the Labour Party.

The Work and Pensions Secretary is probably best known for two things: the sideburns that suggest he probably wasted much of the 1980s listening to the Smiths and the Cocteau Twins, and the fact he was once exposed as being photo-shopped into a picture to suggest he had been at a meeting he hadn’t attended. Whoops!

But at Westminster he’s quickly gaining a reputation for himself as a hardworking minister who is a whizz with figures, getting to grips with benefits reform in a way his predecessor, Peter Hain, was too busy battling for fifth place in the Labour deputy leadership campaign to do.

Even right-wing political magazine The Spectator, no supporter of Labour, backed him to take over from Gordon Brown last week.

It has long been expected that the next Labour leadership battle would be between two of the dominant policy wonks of the last few years – Foreign Secretary David Miliband from the social democrat wing of the party, and Schools Secretary Ed Balls from the more out-and-out socialist end.

But with the party struggling so badly, there’s a growing thirst for Labour to ‘skip a generation’ and look to the next lot, especially Purnell and Culture Secretary Andy Burnham.

It’ll be a big leap from ‘Not Flash, Just Gordon’ to a man who was engaged to achingly hip arthouse director Lucy Walker, and who lists Radio One foghorn Zane Lowe as his favourite radio programme.

But with David Cameron consistently leading among the public on who comes across most as a ‘real person’, perhaps it is time for Labour to fight fire with fire.