Opinion Matrix: Power grabs and ongoing reshuffles

In her column Rachel Sylvester says Dominic Cummings is the Marxist of Downing Street.

She wrote: "The real target of the reshuffle was not Mr Javid but the Treasury. Dominic Cummings, the prime minister's senior adviser, sees the chancellor's department as a Remain-supporting, fiscally conservative roadblock to reform. He once said he wanted to "break the power of the Treasury", the only rival powerbase to No 10 in Whitehall, and is now setting about it.

"Brexiteers have always been suspicious of the Treasury because its experts have repeatedly warned about the economic consequences of leaving the EU. Iain Duncan Smith, the former Tory leader, has called for the department to be broken up, describing it as "the worst thing we have in Britain". When he was work and pensions secretary he once warned a Treasury official who had challenged his universal credit plans that if he didn't fall into line he would be "eating his own balls for breakfast".

"Mr Cummings has also started to see the "department that likes to say no" as the biggest impediment to his campaign to "level up" the regions by pouring money into the so-called "red wall" seats in the north and Midlands that switched from Labour to Conservative at the last election."

She added: "This is more about power than policy. Mr Javid was the latest victim of Mr Cumminngs's "long march through the institutions" on the road to a revolution that he hopes will reshape the state and tackle what he sees as the liberal bias of the British establishment."

The Guardian

Daniel Trilling also talks about the fall out from Mr Johnson's reshuffle in his column.

He said: "It has become received wisdom among Westminster pundits that the new winning formula in politics is to “move left on economics and right on culture”. Boris Johnson’s cabinet reshuffle looks like an attempt to put this lesson into practice: forcing Sajid Javid, an advocate of strict spending limits, out of the Treasury suggests that the prime minister wants to strategically splash money around – however superficial this moving “left” might prove to be.

"At the same time, Johnson’s government has sent a series of clear signals to the right – on immigration, on perceived liberal bias at the BBC, on the “free-speech crisis” in universities – the latest of which is the appointment of Suella Braverman as attorney general.

"This suggests that the government intends to pursue the pantomime authoritarianism displayed by the home secretary, Priti Patel, at last year’s party conference: an ostentatious cruelty, directed at people who supposedly threaten public safety, and waved like a taunt to the liberal elite that stands in the government’s way."

The Daily Record

Its editorial asks who is in charge at No 10 following on from the reshuffle.

The paper said: "Boris Johnson's Government has all the power but the Prime Minister is clearly not in charge. In the background, shadowy aide Dominic Cummings works his dark arts."

It added that with recent departures it is "all very familiar to anyone watching the Donald Trump horror show across the Atlantic. The men running the show are just too busy massaging their own egos."

The Scotsman

Its editorial reflected on how the Scottish Cabinet now has more women than men in a landmark moment, but says there is still much to do.

It said: "Kate Forbes made history when she became the first woman to deliver the Scottish Budget earlier this month and Nicola Sturgeon's reshuffle has produced another landmark moment with women now outnumbering men in the Cabinet. To those who thought the argument over equality of the sexes had been won long ago, it may come as a surprise that such events have taken so long. Given the Scottish Parliament has existed for two decades, one would have thought there would have been a female finance secretary or a majority of women in the Cabinet before now."