Analysis: Anneliese Dodds’ sacking was a long time coming
Anneliese Dodds’ sacking last night makes her one of the shortest ever serving Labour shadow chancellors, after a little more than 13 months in the role.
She impressed early on as she marked a clear tonal change from the far-left policies of Jeremy Corbyn and John McDonnell, before heavy criticism began to fall on her shoulders.
Her new role as party chair and policy review chief is nothing to sneeze at, but she will no longer retain responsibility for shadowing the impossibly popular chancellor Rishi Sunak or setting the party’s economic direction.
In many ways the sacking was unsurprising, after criticism began to mount early this year during the start of Labour’s recent decline in the polls.
Polling, and focus groups from outlets like Times Radio, revealed Dodds hadn’t been able to make much of an impression on the electorate, leading some to question whether she was fit for the job.
She faced a series of hostile briefings against her in the media, with a slew of stories reporting she would be sacked and replaced with Rachel Reeves – exactly what happened last night.
A source close to Dodds told CityAM that the shadow chancellor had faced a “concerted campaign” to damage her reputation from inside the party.
“You’re there at the top, which makes you a target,” they said.
“If you don’t brief against the leader you’re going to brief against people around him – his staff or his shadow chancellor.”
Dodds was clearly unlucky to come into the position during an international crisis where the government was paying 12m people’s wages and handing out hundreds of billions in grants and tax cuts to businesses.
She also stepped into the job just months after the party’s worst election defeat since 1935 in which the party’s economic credentials were shattered even further in the eyes of the electorate.
Coming up with a left-wing narrative to counter Sunak’s Covid spend-athon, while also winning the public’s trust back on the economy, was always going to be tough, but she did have some clear successes.
Dodds’ intelligence and policy nous, she’s a former economics professor, was evident when she successfully rallied for extensions to the furlough scheme and changes to the Coronavirus Business Interruption Loan Scheme (CBILS).
She also put in some good shifts when attacking the chancellor on his links to the David Cameron-Greensill Capital lobbying scandal.
However, her abilities as a media performer and political storyteller were lacking and she failed to raise her profile in any serious way during her 13 months as shadow chancellor.
While this could be blamed on the pandemic sucking up everyone’s energy, it never really felt like she had the tools required to be a successful communicator and opposition attack dog.
She never displayed that killer turn of phrase needed to make a dent in the public’s imagination or garner significant media attention.
Put simply, she always felt too much like an intellectual and not enough like a politician.
Perhaps this can be blamed on the fact that she, much like Sir Keir Starmer, has only been an MP for a short amount of time compared to previous holders of the job.
The source close to Dodds also said she had been “caught between something pretty grim” between leader Starmer and deputy leader Angela Rayner.
Starmer’s attempt to sack his deputy from her role as party chair and campaign co-ordinator on Saturday night – after a disastorous set of results in the North during the “super Thursday” elections – backfired as Rayner reportedly became enraged and launched a brutal briefing war.
Starmer quickly backtracked and Rayner ended up with a very similar role as before, albeit with a different title, while the party leader still conducted a small reshuffle to save some face.
Some media outlets reported that the row was a part of long simmering tensions, however a Rayner ally denied there had been “anything grim” between the two and that “Angela was going to do Marr on Sunday to defend Keir until he sacked her”.
Amidst this kind of psychodrama it is easy to see how sacking Dodds was an easy solution for Starmer to try and move on from an horrific week for the Labour party.