Mark Stuart: Labour tale of the unexpected after Miliband finds he has to chase shadows

Not only is Doncaster North MP, Ed Miliband the new leader, but he has also given the posts of Shadow Chancellor, Shadow Home Secretary and Shadow Foreign Secretary to Alan Johnson, Ed Balls and Yvette Cooper respectively.

That these three Yorkshire high-flyers should have been awarded the most prestigious roles comes as no surprise, but the precise portfolios they have been assigned has raised more than a few eyebrows.

Most commentators were expecting either Ed Balls or his wife, Yvette Cooper, to be made Shadow Chancellor. After all, they are both trained economists and both had years of experience serving in the Treasury.

Unfortunately, Ed Miliband was faced with a terrible dilemma. If he promoted Ed Balls, the Conservative Party would have claimed that Labour was not serious about facing up to cuts in public services. If instead Miliband had selected Yvette Cooper, then the media would have sought to undermine her role by constantly speculating that her husband was somehow pulling the policy strings behind the scenes.

Worse still, the media would have quickly developed a fresh fixation with supposed tensions inside the Balls household, just as they ruined David Miliband's chances of serving in the Shadow Cabinet through accusations of alleged sibling rivalry with his younger brother.

In the end, Ed Miliband plumped for Alan Johnson as Shadow Chancellor, meaning that none of Labour's top three politicians has any experience of their new portfolios.

Johnson, in particular, lacks any first hand knowledge of the Treasury. His first response to his appointment was to announce that he would be buying a beginner's guide to economics.

The Hull West and Hessle MP will no doubt point to his brief spell at Trade and Industry at the beginning of Tony Blair's third term as evidence that he knows something about international finance, but this as much a political appointment as an economic one.

No fewer than 10 of the 19 Labour MPs elected to the Shadow Cabinet were supporters of David Miliband, and the new leader felt that he needed to represent the Blairite wing of the party within the top three jobs.

For the closest historic parallel, we have to go all the way back to 1961, when Hugh Gaitskell unexpectedly appointed James Callaghan to the post of Shadow Chancellor, rather than the favourite and trained economist, Harold Wilson. Just as with Alan Johnson, Callaghan faced a high degree of initial scepticism by financial journalists that he wasn't up to the job. Those fears were eventually realised when Callaghan was forced to devalue the pound in 1967 as Chancellor.

However, there is no God-given rule in British politics that political chancellors (or their shadow equivalents) need fair any better or worse than ones with economic credentials: both Lloyd George and Kenneth Clarke are examples of essentially political chancellors who made a success of the job while Johnson said yesterday: "You don't need to be a professor of economics to be a Treasury minister."

Moreover, just as it didn't take the assiduous Johnson long to master the notoriously difficult post of Home Secretary, I see no reason why he can't quickly master the job of Shadow Chancellor.

No doubt Ed Balls will be feeling bruised that he has twice had the portfolio he most wanted snatched from his grasp (the other time being when Alistair Darling refused to budge as Chancellor in June 2009). But the Morley and Outwood MP should content himself with the fact that the role of Shadow Home Secretary will add a second non-Treasury position to his CV: in the longer run, no-one will be able to say that Balls lacks experience outside an economic portfolio. In recent times, Balls has also picked up some unlikely allies along the way, including Peter Mandelson, who admires his pugnacious style of Opposition politics. Labour will literally need Balls in the months and years ahead.

The most disappointed of Yorkshire's top three should be Yvette Cooper.

She must be kicking herself for stepping aside in the leadership contest in favour of her husband, a contest she might have won. And, despite finishing top of the Shadow Cabinet poll, Cooper still didn't land the job she wanted.

One of the most interesting features of the new Labour frontbench team is the high number of women: 12 out of 27 in all, if Deputy Leader Harriet Harman, Rosie Winterton (the new Chief Whip) and female shadow ministers in the House of Lords are included.

But the paradox is that despite their number, too few of Labour's high-flying women have stepped up to the mark. Both Yvette

Cooper and fellow Yorkshire MP, Caroline Flint, are excellent performers on television, but neither felt able to put

themselves forward to lead the party. To invert the words of

that old hit song, Labour's

sisters ain't doing it for themselves. It's high time they stepped up to the mark.

It's also time that Labour dispensed with its ridiculous method of electing its Shadow Cabinet. Far too many of the MPs elected by their colleagues are simply not up to scratch. If Labour made it back into government at the next election, Ed Miliband would be advised to ditch at least half of the members of this mediocre ministerial line-up.