Benedict Brogan points out this morning in his Telegraph Blog, that First Lord Lord Mandelson is acquiring a very large team, - the DBIS is now business, skills, universities, and anything else you can think of.
The super-department now has 11 ministers, counting his Lordship, of whom 7 are ministers of state, the rest mere parliamentary under-secretaries. All in all it must represent about 10% of the entire cabinet.
Brogan cheekily points out, 5 are nor elected MPs but are in the Lords. (It is, of,course note yet clear whether Sir/Lord Alan Sugar will be added to this.) So we have a Labour government, looking more and more like a nineteenth century cabinet, with so many peers.
None of these are accountable to the electorate, or open to questioning in the Commons, and they are appointed for life.
The democratic deficit gets larger by the week!
The big plus for us all is that although we do not not know how good Mandy will be at leading a diverse department, - his gifts hitherto are behind the scenes briefing, for and against, and managing spin. At least, if he has more departmental responsibility, his spinning and briefing time will be more limited.
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