RESHUFFLES are never easy, which makes it all the more surprising why prime ministers often tinker so much with their Cabinet teams.
Of course, events – scandals, sackings and resignations – often force a premier’s hand and there is always pressure to refresh and reboot a weak and tired-looking administration with fresh blood.
But reshuffles often create as many problems as they solve; as Tony Blair often found.
His onetime media chief Alastair Campbell noted: “You know with absolute certainty that today’s broadly loyal minister is tomorrow’s bitter and backbiting backbencher.”
With the departure of Damian Green, Theresa May was forced to make changes. Yet a majority of the portfolios have stayed the same; most notably the major ones. A night of the long knives it was not.
But, of course, the Prime Minister cannot risk at this extremely sensitive time alienating any of her top team; so it was a tinkering exercise.
Perhaps the main change was making David Lidington the new man in the Cabinet Office, who will have the task of trying to persuade Nicola Sturgeon and her colleagues that the Brexit legislation is not really a power-grab and that they should recommend Holyrood gives its consent, thus averting a major constitutional crisis.
But even if Michael Russell, the Scottish Government’s Brexit Minister, comes over all nice in the spring and says the amended EU Withdrawal Bill is all fine and dandy, a constitutional chasm awaits later in the year in the form of legislation that will put the Brexit deal into law.
This will include Mrs May’s plan to take Britain out of the European single market and the customs union; a so-called hard Brexit. What will the First Minister do then? Mr Lidington might have his work cut out.
The biggest casualty of the night was Justine Greening, who could not stomach a move from Education to Work and Pensions. Instead the job went unexpectedly to Esther McVey, who became a Labour hate figure over her cuts to disability benefits while at the Department for Work and Pensions. John McDonnell, the Shadow Chancellor, famously described her as a “stain on humanity”. Now she runs the department.
The gaffe over the Tory HQ tweet making Chris Grayling the new Tory Chairman shows how Brandon Lewis, the real Tory Chairman, faces a mountain in modernising CCHQ and making the Conservatives more appealing to younger voters. Mount Everest springs to mind.
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