Miliband's Yorkshire mafia loom large in shadows at Westminster

THEY used to say a Scottish mafia ruled Labour – but now the talk is that Yorkshire rules the roost.

In those days it was the tartan links of the likes of Gordon Brown, Robin Cook, Donald Dewar and John Reid that led to the accusations of undue influence from north of the border.

The North East also had its time in the ascendancy – with Tony Blair, Peter Mandelson, Alan Milburn, Stephen Byers and Nick Brown all at the heart of the party.

But now eyebrows are being raised in Westminster that five top jobs in the party are held by Yorkshire MPs and more than a third of 28 Shadow Cabinet attendees will be based in this region.

When party activists gathered in Manchester two weeks ago to discover the outcome of the leadership contest, few would have imagined quite such a dramatic takeover but Doncaster North MP Ed Miliband’s late surge to win set the wheels in motion.

After deciding previous Chief Whip Nick Brown was too divisive to stay and failing to tempt defeated leadership contender Andy Burnham to take the job, he turned to his neighbour Rosie Winterton, MP for Doncaster Central, as the person who could span the party’s divides.

Meanwhile the Shadow Cabinet election was hotting up, with 49 MPs competing for 19 jobs – six of them reserved for women.

Ms Winterton’s job – with a guaranteed Shadow Cabinet seat – meant she was removed from the equation, immediately boosting the chances of Don Valley MP Caroline Flint and Wakefield’s Mary Creagh getting into the top team – ultimately coming 10th and 14th.

Former Cabinet Ministers Ed Balls, Yvette Cooper and Alan Johnson were considered safe bets – earning them plum jobs of shadowing Home Affairs, Foreign Office and the Treasury – along with Wentworth MP John Healey, a regular in the tea rooms who won admiration for his work as Housing Minister and whose popularity among colleagues saw him come second to pick up the Health brief.

Hilary Benn also eased home and yesterday Mr Miliband found room for one more Yorkshire voice – Hemsworth’s Jon Trickett, a former Parliamentary aide to Gordon Brown who began part of his campaign team during the leadership contest, who will attend meetings as Shadow Minister of State at the Cabinet Office. What’s more, Shadow Cabinet twins Maria and Angela Eagle – given the Transport and Treasury Chief Secretary briefs – can claim to have been born in Bridlington.

When the rest of the Shadow front bench is finalised there are likely to be jobs for Diana Johnson, an Education Minister in Government, and first steps on the ladder for new Leeds West MP Rachel Reeves and Barnsley East’s Michael Dugher.

“It’s not that long ago that when colleagues in the North East seemed to have quite a large representation in the Cabinet,” said Ms Flint, who has the Local Government brief. “I think it’s one of those interesting talking points but what’s different with the Shadow Cabinet is we have to be elected by our peers.” Rotherham MP Denis MacShane, who spent years in the political front line, reckoned it was good news for the region. “It’s important that Yorkshire – which suffered so grievously under Margaret Thatcher – now has a new generation of politicians able to articulate and defend the need for public spending and for inward investment into Yorkshire.”

Critics will question the depth of the Yorkshire roots of some of the “mafia” – while all have bases in the region, several are more at home in London but Michael Dugher said: “It shows the breadth of talent that the county has.”