Last week's coalition reshuffle was not exactly the Night of the Long Knives.

With the exception perhaps of the sacking of Scottish secretary Michael Moore with the more combative Alistair Carmichael, ahead of next year's independence referendum, no big beasts were sent to sulk grumpily on the backbenches.

Labour party leader, Ed Miliband, however, made a few bolder calls to his front bench ahead of the May 2015 general election.

Key shadow briefs changed hands, education, work and pensions, transport and defence.

Commentators and Labour experts have enjoyed a field day poring over the meaning and subtext behind the changes.

One interpretation sees the moves as a chess-like defensive gambit to protect the leader in case Labour's strategy of winning the 35% of the vote deemed sufficient for a Parliamentary majority comes unstuck.

Some have read the runes as telling the departure of die-hard Blairites for ‘loyalist' Blairites.

In this reading, former shadow education secretary Stephen Twigg has made way for telegenic history don Tristram Hunt – a protégé of Lord Mandelson.

Dr Hunt, an expert on the Industrial Revolution, is to take the fight over standards in education direct to Michael Gove.

In his first outing on the Andrew Marr Show, Dr Hunt, recanted earlier criticism of free schools as being a ‘vanity project for yummy mummies'.

In what is more a change of tone than a change of policy, he said a Labour government would push ahead with what it called parent-led academies in areas of educational need.

This would mean maintaining the good among the 170 free schools that have been established already, as part of wider efforts to address the pressure caused by the recent baby boom and boost ‘enterprise and innovation' in creating new school places.

But he would crack down on any free schools established as ‘ideological experiments' found running aground of Ofsted inspectors.

What the policy implications might be for the role of local authorities in overseeing and influencing a schools sector which will have gone beyond the tipping point of academisation, is perhaps best left to the manifesto.

In like fashion, the new shadow work and pensions secretary, Rachel Reeves, has used her early media forays to strike out for the centre ground and reel in the Government's popular hard line on welfare.

‘Nobody should be under any illusions that they are going to be able to live a life on benefits under a Labour government,' she said.

‘If you can work you should be working, and under our compulsory jobs guarantee if you refuse that job you forgo your benefits, and that is really important.'

Some commentators have seen the arrival of Mary Creagh into the transport brief as more evidence Labour might pull the plug on the HS2 rail programme, while others believe this could not be the case, because of the potential benefits the scheme could bring to her Wakefield constituency.

But despite these changes, the key shadow remains intact – with Ed Balls in place as shadow chancellor, Yvette Cooper retaining the shadow home secretary role and Andy Burnham retaining the leader's faith as shadow health secretary.

Similarly, Hilary Benn remains as shadow communities secretary.