The first climate change questions in the Commons should be worth watching. Three days after Gordon Brown appointed Ed Miliband to head the new department, David Cameron has promoted Greg Clark to shadow him.
Clark is not a household name, but he's one of the cleverest people sitting on the Conservative frontbench and he is tipped to go very far indeed. Imagine a more worldly version of David Willetts.
The son of a milkman (which means that, unlike many Cameronians, he's immune from Labour "toff" charges), Clark has until now been in charge of Tory policy relating the voluntary sector, which is absolutely crucial to Cameron's hopes of repairing the "broken society". He raised hackles when he suggested that Conservatives should look to Polly Toynbee and not Winston Churchill for ideas about the welfare state, but that did at least show the Tories were changing.
And Miliband is certainly worth watching too. Until recently he's been overshadowed by his brother, the foreign secretary, but on the Westminster futures market they've been selling Davids and buying Eds quite aggressively in recent days. A PoliticsHome survey published today rates Ed's conference speech as the best by a Labour politician apart from Brown. And at Compass online there's a post today saying Ed represents "the real hope for renewal".
The rest of the Tory mini-reshuffle is unremarkable (Nick Hurd replaces Clark as shadow charities minister, Greg Barker is shadow minister for climate change, and Charles Hendry shadow minister for energy). But an issue that many consider to be the most important facing Britain will now be debated by two of the most impressive young stars in parliament. That's good for politics.
