The shadow cabinet elections were irrelevant as no one has any idea which of the better-known Labour MPs is any good in opposition. The real shadow cabinet elections will take place in October 2012. Miliband has picked loads of bright young things who won seats in May. Some will be stars, but no one knows. What they all have in common is that they are Ed clones — special advisers and policy wonks. The women all look like Ed's first big political girlfriend, Liz Lloyd, who still works for Blair. Ed likes glam, as the long-legged, TV-friendly Gloria de Piero and Luciana Berger testify.

The shadow cabinet elections threw up ten Yorkshire Labour MPs. Despite appearances, this is not a return to gritty Northern reality. These MPs — Caroline Flint, Mary Creagh, Hilary Benn or Alan Johnson — are not Tykes but nearly all Londoners who were awarded safe seats in Labour's 1997 de-proletarianisation. The London dominance of Ed's Labour Party is remarkable. The leader is a pure-bred North London intellectual. His deputy, Harriet Harman, is St Paul's and Peckham, and her hubby Jack Dromey, despite his Birmingham seat, is another Londoner. Ken Livingstone came top of the poll for the National Executive Committee. The Labour NEC has been moribund since Blair took over, but in opposition it comes back to life. Livingstone is also the party's candidate for the London mayoral contest in 2012, the biggest Labour-Tory fight ahead of the next general election. 

Labour has become Londonised at the expense of the Scots and Welsh. The de-tartanisation of Labour has not been noticed by the Westminster bubble commentators. The long hegemony of clever Scots — John Smith, Gordon Brown, Robin Cook, John Reid, Donald Dewar — is over. David Miliband placed his faith in a Brownite Scot, Douglas Alexander, and a Blairite Scot, Jim Murphy, to win the leadership. Disastrously, they failed to get more than 50 per cent of Labour MPs to sign up and were so contaminated by New Labour disdain for trade unions they had no idea how to deliver just a few union votes for their man.

So Scots are sidelined. Meanwhile, the Welsh Labour gang failed to get a single one of their once influential tribe into the shadow cabinet. Neil Kinnock may have boasted that Ed's victory meant "We have got our party back" but no one seems to want the windbag tendency to be back at the top of Labour.

Alan Johnson is the one non-graduate in Ed's line-up. He is no more an economist than George Osborne is. But he has a feline, thinking man's populist style. He is the closest Labour has to Ken Clarke. And unlike Clarke, who disappeared into clouds of cigar smoke as he made a fortune working for British American Tobacco after 1997, Johnson is enjoying his politics as never before.

Cameron, Clegg and Osborne represent the rich men's effortless climb to the top style of modern centre-right politics. Ed is edgier and not yet defined. He has been an apprentice in the school of two masters, Blair and Brown, who taught all their pupils that power is the only thing worth aiming for in politics. The rest is a Guardian op-ed.

No one knows exactly the contours of politics over the next period. The cuts may work or cause real social and economic trouble. But Ed has cleared the decks and ditched old New Labour with ruthless efficiency. He may be a much more formidable opponent for Cameron and a much more attractive future partner for the Lib Dems when they tire of being Tory fig-leaves than people imagine. A real political contest is about to begin.