by Kevin Meagher

Being deputy leader of the Labour party is a bit like being president of a golf club. The role is largely honorary, conferring on its incumbent a level of artificial seniority, safely removed from the actual running of things. At least with the golf club, you might get a few free rounds. The reward for being deputy leader of the Labour party is the graveyard slot on Thursday morning at the party conference.

Historically, it’s been used to bring balance to the leadership, so, in essence, the post-holder represents the losing wing of the party. So it was with Denis Healey and, later, with John Prescott. Occasionally, a bone is thrown to show the party’s progressive tendencies. So working-class Ted Short replaced snooty Roy Jenkins and Margaret Beckett became the first woman deputy leader (and interim leader following John Smith’s death).

The only interesting pitch in recent years, from someone hoping to become the rear portion of this particular pantomime horse, came from Jon Cruddas when he went for the job back in 2007. He promised to forego a frontbench role and instead concentrate on the unglamorous task of developing the party’s organisation. Most other contenders are happy to inherit this pitcher of warm spit on the basis that an upturned bucket offers the chance to step-up.

But it doesn’t. Labour’s next shadow chancellor is an altogether more important appointment for the future of the party. Whatever analysis is eventually settled on to explain the party’s dire election defeat, routinely finding itself 20 points behind David Cameron and George Osborne on questions of economic credibility and who voters trust to manage their money was surely a huge part of it.

Closing this gap has must be the party’s Number One strategic priority. Ed Balls didn’t manage it during his four years as shadow chancellor. He was too easy to paint into a corner, fairly or unfairly, as part of the cause of the economy’s problems. A point hammered home by his indifferent performances in his Budget day responses.

The Conservative message on the economy: ‘We’ve weathered the storm/ Taken tough decisions/ Developed a long-term economic plan/ Brought back growth/ Don’t take a chance on irresponsible Miliband-Balls,’ was brutally simplistic and consistent.

Labour simply had no answer, having failed to frame the circumstances of 2008 and the subsequent bank bail-outs when it was in government and had a better chance to do so. In opposition, the frontbench offered no coherent critique of George Osborne’s abysmal record on growth and debt-reduction that managed to cut-through with voters.

But when you choose to adopt a 35 per cent strategy, you become dulled to the need to do so. What a party says about the economy, or about spending priorities, or about where it seeks to draw-in money, defines who it is targeting, electorally. Labour calculated that it didn’t need to appeal to 65 per cent of the voters, so decided not to.

While the shadow chancellor is the leader’s principal general, helping enforce caution, moderation and consistency across the frontbench, he or she is also dictates in whose interests the party seeks to govern, tuning the economic and financial dials up and down accordingly.

Given the importance of the role, is it not slightly odd that the party has another 12 weeks to contemplate its next golf club president, but will have no say over the appointment of its main general? While the idea of putting Labour’s next leader on probation and reviewing their performance after three years is a completely insane, destabilising suggestion, applying it to the next shadow chancellor makes more sense.

If Labour isn’t breaking through on the economy two years out from the next general election, then it will lose again. You don’t need to be an economist to work that out. Better and easier to jettison a failing shadow chancellor than a leader.

Kevin Meagher is associate editor of Uncut

Tags: deputy leadership election, Ed Balls, John Prescott, Kevin Meagher, Margaret Beckett, shadow chancellor