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In a dramatic break with tradition, Ed Miliband, the Labour leader, has appointed the party’s first openly Tory front-bench spokesperson.

By appointing Stephen Twigg as Shadow Secretary of State for Education, Labour has broken decades of prejudice by allowing someone who is a practicing Tory to be a front-bench spokesperson for the party.

Announcing the ground-breaking appointment, Ed Miliband said:

Labour must be an all-inclusive party, a party which is not afraid of diversity, but actually embraces it. There is no room for prejudice in the Labour Party. By appointing Stephen Twigg as Shadow Education Secretary, Labour is telling the nation that we can be all things to all men. And women. And Tories.

Party MPs were sanguine about the appointment. One backbencher said:

To be honest all of Stephen’s colleague and friends have known for ages he’s a Tory. Now he’s open about it, it’s no real surprise to most of us. In fact, under New Labour a lot of our ministers were secretly Tories, but this is the first time they’ve been able to openly admit to it.

To underline the new policy, one of the first acts of the Shadow Education Secretary was to express his support for the Tory’s education policies.