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The PM’s cabinet of puppets and placemen Some of Boris's ministers are in the wrong role; others are in the wrong profession

Bag carriers and yes people. Credit: Matt Dunham - WPA Pool/Getty Images


December 8, 2020   7 mins

The idea of the Prime Minister as ‘first among equals’ is a polite fiction — and always has been. Leaders are meant to lead. If they can’t direct their deputies, they’re done for. But Boris Johnson has gone further than any previous PM. For him and his right-hand men, ‘taking back control’ is like charity — it begins at home. The only power base allowed anywhere in Whitehall is in Downing Street. Not even the Treasury is exempt.

Hence the drama of the post-election reshuffle, back in February. The Chancellor of the Exchequer, Sajid Javid, was told to sack his advisors and make room for a team of Downing Street heavies. Honourably, he refused — and so he was forced out too.

The message was unambiguous: the whole Cabinet, from the Chancellor down, would have to submit to central control — or else. Henceforth, the relationship between Number 10 and every minister, no matter how senior, would be modelled on that between Matthew Corbett and Sooty.

And yet the puppet show has not gone to plan.

Last month, the chief puppeteer — Dominic Cummings — lost the battle for Downing Street. While he’d eliminated all resistance in the Cabinet room, he hadn’t accounted for the upstairs flat. Big mistake.

And then there’s the Prime Minister himself — who these days looks like a ghost at his own feast. All leaders fade away eventually, but the pace of events has accelerated his career trajectory. To sink from conquering hero to yesterday’s man in a space of a year is going some.

Finally, and most tellingly, there are the puppets. The supposedly synchronised Cabinet is all over the place. Their individual performances range from stellar to abysmal. So, as it turns out, who you appoint to the top jobs still matters, no matter how centralised your style of government. Eight examples prove the point:

1. Rishi Sunak

Two years ago, Rishi Sunak was the Parliamentary Under Secretary of State for Local Government — just about the most junior of junior ministers. Now, he’s Chancellor of the Exchequer and the favourite to succeed his boss. There was never any doubting his potential, but he owes his meteoric rise to Boris Johnson’s model of government.

It’s an age-old trick: ensure loyalty by promoting those who haven’t earned it. Appointees are indebted to their patrons; and the principle of ‘easy come, easy go’ means it’s straightforward to dispense with them. Look down the list of Secretaries of State and you’ll find one example after another.

With Sunak, however, the cipher turned out to be a star. Which is just as well, given events. As a competent manager and reassuring communicator, he’s implemented crisis socialism without freaking out the markets, the public or his own party.

We’ve also seen some hints of creativity. He’ll need more, though, because you can’t recover from an unprecedented crisis without new ideas. His proposal for a National Infrastructure Bank is a key test. If it can raise and lend money like a real bank (instead of just being glorified government fund), we might just be able to ‘build back better’.

2. Dominic Raab

The idea of a politician ‘rising without trace’ has become a cliché, but it’s a fitting description of Raab’s CV. As Foreign Secretary (and, before that, Secretary of State for Exiting the European Union), Brexit should have been the making or breaking of him. But Brexit policy consists of two kinds of decision — the really big ones made by the Prime Minister and the excruciatingly fine detail handled by the negotiating team. There’s nothing much in between for the Cabinet minister.

The fact is that Raab is in the wrong job — appointed to the FCO not for what he can do, but for what he represents (i.e. the Eurosceptic Right of his party). For the Cabinet’s tough guy it’s a mismatch — like putting Chuck Norris in charge of a Swiss finishing school. Raab needs a big spending department to run; and though that would technically be a demotion, it would be the best thing that could happen to him.

3. Priti Patel

The Home Secretary was also appointed to make a point. A hardliner on both Brexit and immigration, her elevation from the backbenches to one of the great offices of state was a clear signal of the government’s intention to get Brexit done and control our borders.

Of course, she was only on the backbenches because she’d resigned from the Cabinet in 2017 after unauthorised meetings with the Israeli government came to light. Few people expected her to return to office so soon, or indeed at all; but salvaging a capsized career is another way in which Downing Street can ensure the loyalty of its appointees.

Since her return, Patel has again fallen foul of the ministerial code — this time in regard to bullying allegations. Despite the official enquiry into the matter, she escaped unscathed. Two things protected her: first, the self-defeating nastiness of the Left — which loves to target women and people of colour who dare to have the ‘wrong’ opinions; and, second, the fact that Patel, despite her obvious limitations, is stubbornly pushing forward on the immigration reforms that were promised in the Conservative manifesto.

Of course, it’s one thing to tighten border control in theory, another to maintain it in practice. As with all Home Secretaries, Patel’s fate ultimately depends on upholding the law as it stands.

4. Matt Hancock

The Secretary of State for Health gives every impression of being another rapid riser. In fact, he had five years in junior ministerial roles before making it to Cabinet — which is an eternity these days. This year, he’s had to draw on every scrap of his experience.

It’s unclear how Hancock will be judged by history (and the inevitable public enquiries) — because the record is so mixed. Will he be remembered for the various test-and-trace fiascos or the triumphs of vaccine policy? How does one balance the failure to protect our care homes from Covid with the fact that the NHS has not been overwhelmed by the greatest challenge in its history?

Secretary of State for Health and Social Care is a big job at the best of times. But in 2020 it grew too big for any one incumbent. A Government that understood the importance of ministers would have carved out special Covid-related roles at Cabinet level (a test-and-trace minister, for instance) — leaving the Health Secretary to focus exclusively on the core issues.

Churchill’s wartime Cabinet was reshaped around the demands of the war effort — and something similar should have happened in this war too.

5. Michael Gove

Michael Gove is by far the most experienced member of the Cabinet. Apart from a brief period of exile following the Brexit referendum, he’s been a senior figure since 2010 — serving three Prime Ministers.

Paradoxically, he’s survived for so long by embracing unpopularity. He’s the political equivalent of a sin-eater: the outcasts who were once paid to take on the sins of others through the consumption of a ritual meal. Of late, these meals have been substantial — with Gove sent out to defend the Government through its imperfect improvisations of lockdown policy.

Allied to his knowledge of the inner workings of the Whitehall machine, Gove has become indispensable. And yet his talents could be better deployed. He is, at heart, a radical — willing to pursue reform in the face of entrenched opposition. As soon as the Covid crisis is over, he should be put in charge of solving another problem that’s been left unsolved for the last decade or more: housing.

6. Robert Jenrick

This would be a good point at which to examine the record of the latest Secretary of State who hasn’t solved the housing crisis. Robert Jenrick is the sixth Cabinet minister in this role since 2010. Some have been real talents, others not so much, and none has been left in post long enough to sort out Britain’s single greatest structural problem.

Indeed, none has been allowed to state the obvious, which is that rampant house price inflation is a bad thing. If the Conservatives want to rescue Generation Rent and revive their vision of a property-owning democracy, then house prices must fall relative to wages.

A generic placeman such as Jenrick is incapable of true reform. His atrocious planning white paper maintains the fiction that the planning system is to blame for the housing crisis — instead of the land bankers. If Boris is serious about building back better then he needs to set Gove loose on the vested interests standing in the way.

7. Gavin Williamson

Oh dear, what can one say? Any politician capable of a media performance like this one has no business being a minister, let alone a Cabinet minister.

In any case, Williamson is unlikely to survive the next reshuffle — not after the results debacle earlier this year. He wasn’t to blame for the closure of schools during lockdown and the cancellation of exams. However, he did oversee the grade allocation algorithm that caused such upset and fury.

His department made the classic mistake of targeting one objective — i.e. the prevention of grade inflation — without considering the wider ramifications. In particular, the downward adjustment of grades based on the past performance not only of the pupil but also the school could not have been more contrary to the principle of levelling up. If you want to succeed as a government’s minister, then best not to drive a coach-and-horses through its domestic agenda.

Robert Jenrick’s housing target algorithm is a similar fiasco — and a further lesson in the foolishness of entrusting policy to mindless robots.

8. Liz Truss

Liz Truss isn’t exactly my kind of conservative. Her infamous tribute to a generation of “#Uber-riding #Airbnb-ing #Deliveroo-eating #freedomfighters” didn’t just make me cringe, but evoked a soul-crushing void.

But, fair’s fair, she’s done a decent job as Secretary of State for International Trade. It’s still early days, but to rebuild a long-abandoned function of sovereign government (i.e. trade diplomacy) is a painstaking task that she’s diligently got on with.

It remains to be seen what purpose this new capacity will be put to — especially when it comes to the looming trade deal with America. The fate of the British countryside hangs in the balance and I hope that Truss makes a stand for the things that matter more than the bottom line. You wouldn’t want to feed chlorine chicken to those Deliveroo-eating freedom fighters, would you Liz?

Nevertheless, she’s had a good year. While she bombed at DEFRA and as Lord Chancellor, she’s undoubtedly found her niche. Which goes to show that getting the right people into Cabinet is only half the struggle. The other half is getting them into the right positions.

Perhaps Downing Street should stop appointing people to roles that they haven’t actually asked for. Instead they should invite applications from candidates who actually want to do each job. They’d thus be able to prepare for the position, think about what they want to do with it and then present their case to the appropriate decision-makers.

I know, it’s a crazy idea — but it seems to work for well-run organisations.


Peter Franklin is Associate Editor of UnHerd. He was previously a policy advisor and speechwriter on environmental and social issues.

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Fraser Bailey
Fraser Bailey
3 years ago

Priti is a good person doing her best against overwhelming odds. I don’t know much about Liz Truss. Gove has gone over to the dark side regarding Covid, which is a terrible shame given all his good work – again against overwhelming odds – in the past. Sunak is just another Goldman Sachs smoothie. Boris has been captured by his girlfriend and her cabal, and plans to destroy us with the Green New Steal. The rest are dreadful, no better than Labour, and you can’t get worse than that.

Lickya Lips
Lickya Lips
3 years ago
Reply to  Fraser Bailey

Don’t forget Gates’ best friend, Hancock – that world famous epidemiologist.

Shelly Michael
Shelly Michael
3 years ago
Reply to  Fraser Bailey

Priti is a good person??????

Basil Chamberlain
Basil Chamberlain
3 years ago

There is a basic flaw in the system: ministers are appointed for political reasons, and not because they have any knowledge or training in the relevant area. Moreover, reshuffles (also done for political reasons) constantly require them to attempt to master a new field. Imagine if plumbers were told after a couple of years to retrain as plasterers, and then again as carpenters a couple of years after that!

On that note, Rory Stewart aptly commented that “the way government works is very odd. I was just 80 per cent through my prison reforms when they moved me to be secretary of state for international development. [Before that] I was just finishing my Africa strategy as Africa minister when they reshuffled me to become prisons minister. I had five ministerial jobs in four years. […] Is it a sort of pantomime in which ministers are playthings designed to placate different parts of the party?”

Of course, this wouldn’t be too serious a problem if ministers had civil servants working for them who had expertise in the relevant area, but civil servants too shift from department to department; indeed, promotion is sometimes impossible except by shifting departments.

This is obviously counterproductive and must stop. If you enter the Foreign Office in your twenties, you should expect to work there until you are 65. You should spend those four decades acquiring ever more knowledge and experience of foreign affairs, growing in competence and expertise. Needless to say, this should not imply tenure; there should be provision to sack incompetent civil servants.

Fraser Bailey
Fraser Bailey
3 years ago

This is obviously one thing that Rory Stewart is right about. The way that ministers are shuffled around before they have finished what the started is just absurd, and probably goes a long way towards explaining the dysfunction of more or less everything the state attempts to do.

Jeremy Smith
Jeremy Smith
3 years ago

According to Rory (and I believe him) his specialty was Astan/Iran – Boris as FM appointed him African minister.
The problem with political/ministerial incompetence is that it falls on the (much maligned) Civil Service to compensate for the ministers.

Charles Reed
Charles Reed
3 years ago
Reply to  Jeremy Smith

Nothing like a true specialsit – I believe the population of Astan is all of 89 families, say 450 people.
Do we take it he knows them all?

Oliver Johnson
Oliver Johnson
3 years ago

Technically, members of the House of Lords can be placed in Cabinet.

This may provide a window for actual Ministerial expertise in the various departments of state, though it’s rather open to abuse (cash for peerages, anyone?), being that the PM can give anyone a peerage. But hey, someone could reform the process.

I’ve no doubt people would argue it’s undemocratic as well, but – to defend my already flawed idea – would you rather have career politicians with a 50/50 chance of them being good at their job, or members of the Lords that have an expertise (not all do I know, but that’s were reform comes in – vague I know) and know their subject well.

I’m thinking Lord Sugar for the Exchequer and Lord Dannatt for Defence!

Mark Corby
Mark Corby
3 years ago

Well said Basil, particularly about the provision to sack the incompetent.

I have always found Rory Stewart a very decent chap to deal with. Perhaps, to the horror of some, he went to that dreaded school in the mid Thames Valley, known as Eton College.

In the not too distant past, he would have made an excellent Proconsul.

Basil Chamberlain
Basil Chamberlain
3 years ago
Reply to  Mark Corby

Ah well, Eton too will be Woke soon, as these pages have shown! Then perhaps “some” will moderate their horror!

Rory Stewart was my mother’s MP, and although she is not a Conservative voter, she certainly respected him.

I was at a dinner at the Carlton Club, about eighteen months ago in the midst of the last Tory leadership election – but despite the venue, this was a politically diverse occasion, since it merely happened that one of the company was a member and had hired a private room there. There were supporters of all three main political parties, Brexiteers and Remainers, etc, etc. Out of curiosity we went round the table, asking everyone whom they would support as Tory leader. And almost everyone, whether of Conservative sympathies or otherwise, opted for Stewart.

Mark Corby
Mark Corby
3 years ago

Precisely Basil, he has all the characteristics of a proper Tory leader, but sadly those virtues are now, so obviously, redundant.

As to Eton, a lost cause, in fact a case of “Damnatio Memoriae !

Nun Yerbizness
Nun Yerbizness
3 years ago

you are correct, there is a basic flaw”Conservative ideology.

mark taha
mark taha
3 years ago

Remember Yes Minister-Sir Humphrey was for shuffles because they made his job easier!

Warren Alexander
Warren Alexander
3 years ago

Incompetent leadership results in failed organisations.

Terry Needham
Terry Needham
3 years ago

“…has again fallen foul of the ministerial code ” this time in regard to bullying allegations. Despite the official enquiry into the matter, she escaped unscathed.”

If she has escaped unscathed from an enquiry into allegations of bullying, then in what sense has she fallen foul of the ministerial code?
Sometimes pedantry matters.

Jeremy Smith
Jeremy Smith
3 years ago
Reply to  Terry Needham

BoJo refused to punish her or publish the investigation.

Terry Needham
Terry Needham
3 years ago
Reply to  Jeremy Smith

On what basis would you claim that he should punish her, given that you were not privy to the results of the investigation?
And why do you think that he should be obliged to publish the results of that investigation?
Perhaps your desire to see her punished is motivated more by your opposition to her policies, than by any principled objection to the manner in which she runs her department.
It was ever thus: It doesn’t matter how you get ’em as long as you get ’em.

Jeremy Smith
Jeremy Smith
3 years ago
Reply to  Terry Needham

My desire (or comment here) is utterly pointless.
Leaks (if you want to believe them) report that she did bully the staff. That is a sackable offence – BoJo decided not to do so. He is the PM he can do that.

Terry Needham
Terry Needham
3 years ago
Reply to  Jeremy Smith

Leaks? Do you mean unattributable gossip?
“My desire (or comment here) is utterly pointless.”
You make my point far more eloquently than you make your own. Thankyou.

Jeremy Smith
Jeremy Smith
3 years ago
Reply to  Terry Needham

No I mean “leaks” as reported on respectable news sources.
Unlike you I don’t suffer from the delusion that my comments here are going to change anyone’s mind – hence they are pointless.

Terry Needham
Terry Needham
3 years ago
Reply to  Jeremy Smith

” Leaks” without a named source are worthless.
Respectable news sources? But without attribution, news sources are not respectable (Well except in the eyes of the true believer, I suppose). You mean gossip mongers.

Gerry Fruin
Gerry Fruin
3 years ago
Reply to  Jeremy Smith

Jeremy I follow your incisive comments closely don’t have to agree of course. But seriously I must ask what your ‘respectable news sources’?
I have looked for longer than I can remember with no success. To me respectable equals unbiased accurate and factual. Suggestions welcomed.

Jeremy Smith
Jeremy Smith
3 years ago
Reply to  Gerry Fruin

Guardian, Spectator, The Times, FT

Terry Needham
Terry Needham
3 years ago
Reply to  Jeremy Smith

Then perhaps you should stop posting here. After all nobody care what you think. I will help you by blocking you. Goodbye Jeremy

Terry Needham
Terry Needham
3 years ago
Reply to  Jeremy Smith

Then perhaps you should stop posting here. After all nobody care what you think. I will help you by blocking you. Goodbye Jeremy

Terry Needham
Terry Needham
3 years ago
Reply to  Jeremy Smith

Then perhaps you should stop posting here. After all nobody care what you think. I will help you by blocking you. Goodbye Jeremy.

Mark Corby
Mark Corby
3 years ago
Reply to  Terry Needham

Hang on! As you well know that is not how we do things in England.

Jeremy should be encouraged to play Devil’s Advocate in these pathetic times.

The next two weeks will tell us whether Bojo is Spartacus or Nero, let us wait and see.

Terry Needham
Terry Needham
3 years ago
Reply to  Mark Corby

You probably won’t be able to see this as my post was cancelled by the spam filter.
Hah!

Terry Needham
Terry Needham
3 years ago
Reply to  Jeremy Smith

Well then perhaps you should stop posting here. After all, by your own admission nobody care what you think. I will help by blocking you.

William Cameron
William Cameron
3 years ago
Reply to  Jeremy Smith

query ? Small lady bullies £200,ooo a year permanent secretary who doesnt even report to her ? How does that work ?

rosie mackenzie
rosie mackenzie
3 years ago
Reply to  Jeremy Smith

Why should he publish the investigation? It was advice commissioned by him for himself, not you. He read it and made his decision. His decision, not yours. Because he is the PM, not you.

Jeremy Smith
Jeremy Smith
3 years ago

He shouldn’t publish it for me, it should be for the whole country!
Surely a transparent government is better?

Chris C
Chris C
3 years ago
Reply to  Jeremy Smith

The guy tasked with investigating breaches of the Ministerial Code has resigned, saying that if Boris Johnson is going to simply ignore the conclusions of enquiries, then there is no point in having them.

That is damning. Unless you are a member of the BoJo cult, of course. I notice that fewer are nowadays.

rosie mackenzie
rosie mackenzie
3 years ago
Reply to  Terry Needham

And the sacking she suffered before was because the then PM was an inferior control freak who resented Priti having a very good and constructive idea. The anti Israeli mandarins in the FCO were furious too. I’ll wager it was having too many good and constructive ideas in the HO that incurred the vengeful wrath of the mandarins there.

Chris C
Chris C
3 years ago

You can’t, as a Minister, hold a meeting with a foreign PM which your own Foreign Office doesn’t know about. You can’t run an independent personal foreign policy. That’s what Priti Patel did.

Apparently, the first that the British PM knew about it was when she was hosting Benjamin Netanyahu in No.10 and Netanyahu mentioned his discussions with Patel. Patel was still keeping them quiet at that point. With the bullying of those below her, and failing to even keep her boss informed, she clearly isn’t a team player. So she was rightly forced to leave the team.

Chris C
Chris C
3 years ago
Reply to  Terry Needham

She was damned by the enquiry. But Boris let her off for the reasons given in the article above.

Terry Needham
Terry Needham
3 years ago
Reply to  Chris C

He “let her off” because she hadn’t done anything wrong.

mark.hanson
mark.hanson
3 years ago

Quite a good piece until the author tries to analyse the Housing Crisis and proceeds by absolving the planning system and blaming “landbankers”. Having spent over thirty years in the housing industry I can tell him that is utter tosh.
Planning has become more and more difficult and bureaucratic with endless calls for more and more specialist reports before a council will even look at an application. I am not aware of a single developer that deliberately sits on consented land waiting for teh price to rise.

However, they do tailor build rates to what is called the absorbtion rate. That’s the number of houses you can sell without the price having to fall to bring in a more marginal tranche of purchasers. Here, they are simply being rational, their job is not to stop house price inflation, that arguably is government’s job if they want to bring “generation rent” onside. Its not something that Housing associations could do either as they are closely watched on the subject of financial viability and would be in bother with their regualtor if they deliberatly sold homes at a loss.

THe HCA, or Homes England, or whatever they are called this week, could in theory act as swing supplier to hold prices down if the government asked it to , but lacks the people skills and knowledge to do so.
That said, there are land speculators who buy sites, work them through planning and then try and sell them for outrageous sums. Perhaps giving local authorities the money and power to compulsorily acquire such sites would clean that area up though I think they are marginal in their impact.
There are clearly problems in the housing development world, but the people who actually do build the homes are not the bad guys as is so often suggested.

L Paw
L Paw
3 years ago
Reply to  mark.hanson

Thank you for your illuminating comments. It seems to me that the author lacks understanding of how a market economy works in relation to house building. He seems to prioritise the inefficiencies that government in general introduce, in this case through bureaucracy and the planning system.

Carl Goulding
Carl Goulding
3 years ago

Even if the reasonably competent round pegs were all in round holes what real difference would it make? Todays article by Tom Chivers applies….. they may be loud but at the same time are silenced. The government may be running the country but they are far from dictating the narrative.

uztazo
uztazo
3 years ago

Couldn’t agree more with this article. Why on earth would a PM appoint members into cabinet without knowing what role they want and how good they are for the role they want?

Jeremy Smith
Jeremy Smith
3 years ago
Reply to  uztazo

it is a crazy idea – brace yourself! – BoJo is incompetent!

tmglobalrecruitment
tmglobalrecruitment
3 years ago
Reply to  Jeremy Smith

indeedbut this has been going on for years

Jeremy Smith
Jeremy Smith
3 years ago

Too many Ministers are appointed because of political expedience. As far as I can tell it is about the very poor quality of MPs. But those people are elected by the people.
In democracy the people get the government they deserve.

tmglobalrecruitment
tmglobalrecruitment
3 years ago
Reply to  Jeremy Smith

that quote you use is naive in a basically 2 party state – do try and think a bit more before you type

Peter KE
Peter KE
3 years ago

Thank goodness for Patel and Truss at least we get some movement in the correct direction.

Terry Needham
Terry Needham
3 years ago

“…has again fallen foul of the ministerial code ” this time in regard to bullying allegations. Despite the official enquiry into the matter, she escaped unscathed.”

If she has escaped unscathed from an enquiry into allegations of bullying, then in what sense has she fallen foul of the ministerial code? Sometimes pedantry matters.

Jeremy Smith
Jeremy Smith
3 years ago

I have been banging on here about COMPETENCE but people prefer to “trigger the libs” over “getting the sh*t done”.
I really can not quantify it (can anyone?) but what we are witnessing (starting with Brexit) is the revolt of the part of the “elite” that is left behind – Peter Turchin has written about “elite overproduction”.
And they were left behind because they were mostly incompetent.

Terry Needham
Terry Needham
3 years ago
Reply to  Jeremy Smith

You have a gift for lowering the level of debate.

Jeremy Smith
Jeremy Smith
3 years ago
Reply to  Terry Needham

Yes it is called the truth.

Terry Needham
Terry Needham
3 years ago
Reply to  Jeremy Smith

A child’s truth, Jeremy.

Andrew McDonald
Andrew McDonald
3 years ago

Baffled not to find any mention of the current SoS for Work and Pensions, the invisible Dr Coffey, whose apparently ineluctable but equally incomprehensible rise up the greasy pole has startled me ever since she became my MP over here in true-blue Suffolk Coastal. I was hoping to find a clue somewhere about her competence and its true focus.

rosie mackenzie
rosie mackenzie
3 years ago

“Raab needs a big spending department to run; and though that would technically be a demotion, it would be the best thing that could happen to him.”

What bigger spending could there be than of our foreign aid? And he has the whole world to go at, not just England, or England and Wales.

rosie mackenzie
rosie mackenzie
3 years ago

Where are the testing fiascos? Testing has been a phenomenal success considering Jeremy Hunt left us with a capacity of 2,000 a day. Now it is 5 or 600,000, more than anyone else in Europe. The tracing and confining to home is another matter. But how much responsibility should the media, including the present author, take for that? Since day 1 they have worked to discredit the Government and make people lose confidence in it, particularly in test and trace. Who is going to answer the telephone to T and T now? What is their incentive, now it has been rubbished by the media?

Jeremy Smith
Jeremy Smith
3 years ago

The media is to blame for Gavin Williamson?

mark.hanson
mark.hanson
3 years ago
Reply to  Jeremy Smith

Yes!- they backed the Conservatives, and Brexit as ordered to do so by their offshore tax-dodging owners. Once in power Johnson realised he needed some real fire power in the education department , so he appointed a guy with real experience of fire places.

Malcolm dunn
Malcolm dunn
3 years ago
Reply to  mark.hanson

But look who Labour have appointed as his opposite number? Williamson may be fairly useless but compared to his opponent he’s Einstein.

mark.hanson
mark.hanson
3 years ago

Well they have told the truth about test and trace, if that has discredited the government as you put it them perhaps that’s because they didn’t do a very creditable job. Sure they have managed – eventually got testing humbers up, though have clearly massaged the figures to show themselves in the best possible light. On the “trace ” side of things their work has been lamentable.

The problem has been that they decided to use a centralised approach and fell for a line of patter from one of the ususal suspects in the call centre selling world, instead of recourcing local councils and letting them get on with it. THe problem has been larelgy one that has been caused by the obsession with centralising power. All good managers delegate, recent governmants seems ot hate this idea, probaly because no-one in them is a remotely good manager.

Chris C
Chris C
3 years ago
Reply to  mark.hanson

In the Spring, Boris was claiming that test-and-trace would be “world beating”. By October, the Government was admitting that T&T would have only a marginal effect. Not surprising considering the lamentable failure to trace people. But still, it created a job for a Tory peer married to a Tory MP.

Geoffrey Simon Hicking
Geoffrey Simon Hicking
3 years ago

For some reason I like Williamson. Telling Russia to “shut up and go away” makes sense. Why hit back with grandiose rhetoric when they are so grubby and pathetic in their attention seeking? Alot of the MOD had respect for him- and not just the civil servants either.

Other than that, not a bad article.

Oliver Johnson
Oliver Johnson
3 years ago

Technically, members of the House of Lords can be placed in Cabinet.

This may provide a window for actual Ministerial expertise in the various departments of state, though it’s rather open to abuse (cash for peerages, anyone?), being that the PM can give anyone a peerage. But hey, someone could reform the process.

I’ve no doubt people would argue it’s undemocratic as well, but – to defend my already flawed idea – would you rather have career politicians with a 50/50 chance of them being good at their job, or members of the Lords that have an expertise (not all do I know, but that’s were reform comes in – vague I know) and know their subject well.

I’m thinking Lord Sugar for the Exchequer and Lord Dannatt for Defence!

Malcolm dunn
Malcolm dunn
3 years ago

Agree with most of this. Raab and Gove are the best we have. Jenrick and Williamson clearly not up to it but who should replace them?

Nun Yerbizness
Nun Yerbizness
3 years ago
Reply to  Malcolm dunn

stop and consider what your contention that “Raab and Gove are the best we have.” implies as to the competency of the Tory Party end to end”there is none.

Nun Yerbizness
Nun Yerbizness
3 years ago

The problem is not with individuals in the Tory Party”the problem is Conservative Ideology.