article: Ed Balls, widely tipped for the Treasury brief, will be shadow home secretary, while Yvette Cooper is shadow foreign secretary. On the crucial issue of the deficit, Mr Johnson said the government was cutting spending too far and too fast. But he acknowledged his lack of economic experience, saying he was being "chucked in the deep end". Asked by the BBC what his first move would be in the job, he joked that it would be to "pick up a primer in economics for beginners". He said he would draw on the experience of other colleagues who had served in the Treasury and it was a "glorious thing" about British politics that politicians had to learn quickly on the job. Government plans to cut spending by 25% in many departments risked "creating mayhem", he stressed. "These are cuts of a scale which we have never seen before," he said. "I believe the government is cutting too fast and too deeply." "There is an alternative," he added. "The government is saying there is no alternative. They are saying it is unavoidable. It is avoidable." During the election, former Labour chancellor Alistair Darling called for the deficit to be cut in half over four years but Ed Balls has since said this is too aggressive and needs to be done more slowly. Asked which camp he was in, Mr Johnson told Sky News that Mr Darling's policy remained the "starting point" for his thinking but Labour had lost the election and needed to "reassess" its position on all key issues. "I never agreed that Alistair's proposals were over too short a period," he said. "I think he got it just about right. But nothing is preserved in aspic. There have been developments since the election and we need to take all those into account." BBC Political Editor Nick Robinson said Ed Miliband's decision to appoint Mr Johnson as shadow chancellor was a "sign of his relative weakness in the party". Mr Johnson is a "loyalist by instinct", who is not likely to come up with an alternative economic policy, but he will be able to unite the party after a divisive leadership contest and "deploy his wry humour and connection with the real world to portray George Osborne as an out-of-touch rich kid," added Robinson. Your views on shadow cabinetFull shadow cabinet listChallenges facing Alan Johnson The ex home secretary is a former postman and trade union leader, who held a string of top jobs when Labour was in government, and was a vocal supporter of David Miliband during Labour's leadership contest. But Transport Secretary Philip Hammond said his economic record and views were "a bit of an unknown" and he seemed like a "caretaker appointment". "It's a very surprising appointment. Ed Miliband said he wanted to move on to a new generation of Labour politicians but Alan Johnson is frankly from the last generation," he told the BBC News Channel. He said Mr Johnson would now have to say whether he would deliver on Ed Milband's promise of a shadow spending review and
summary: Alan Johnson has been named shadow chancellor in a surprise move by new Labour leader Ed Miliband.