ANALYSIS: The four reshuffle mis-steps that left Theresa May red-faced
4 min read
Theresa May vowed to reignite her Government with a New Year reshuffle... and then it all went wrong. Here's how.
NO, MINISTER
Nothing smacks of a loss of authority more than your staff refusing to do what you tell them. The Prime Minister was left humiliated when Jeremy Hunt was unwilling to budge as she tried to move him from the health brief. After more than an hour locked in Downing Street he emerged not just with his job intact but with a beefed-up title taking on social care as well. And things only got worse for the PM when Justine Greening decided she would rather quit the Government than move from the Department for Education to the Department for Work and Pensions. The failures scuppered hopes for a smooth re-ordering of the pack and compounded the narrative that the long-trailed radical reshuffle was little more than a game of sleeping lions. Somebody should have reminded Theresa May before she embarked on the Cabinet shake-up that a PM who lacks the authority to make decisions about her team is essentially powerless.
SCHOOLBOY ERROR
One of the more surprising moves of the reshuffle was Jo Johnson being stripped of the universities brief and shunted to the Department for Transport. But it would have been little more than an eyebrow-raiser if Johnson had not spent a painful hour in the Commons just yesterday defending the appointment of controversial columnist Toby Young to the board of new universities regulator the Office for Students. Johnson admitted to MPs that past comments by the Spectator scribe (involving the words “tits”, “baps”, “cleavage”, “knockers”, “bint” and listing the benefits of eugenics) were unpleasant but not a cause to sack him. Cue the resignation of Young just hours later, leaving the minister red-faced. A quiet role in the background of transport might save him some blushes. Johnson also takes a Minister for London brief, piling responsibility on him ahead of local elections in May which have all the makings of a grim night for the Tories.
TOO MANY TWEETS MAKES A....
Trying to haul your party into the modern age usually means not making a balls-up of your social media strategy. So what did Theresa May do in her opening reshuffle move? The Conservative HQ Twitter account confirmed rumours that Chris Grayling had been handed the chairman role – only to backtrack in an embarrassing reverse ferret about 30 seconds later. It remains unclear whether the blunder was a genuine mistake or a quick change of heart in the face of Tory anger at the man dubbed ‘Failing Grayling’ by his critics being handed the plum role. Either one is bad news for Theresa May. The gaffe set the tone for a shambolic reshuffle, which was eventually confirmed by the Hunt/Greening farago. It also played straight into the hands of the Labour press team, which has become famed for showing its peers how social media can be harnessed to devastating effect. Even Jeremy Corbyn quipped to his MPs that Grayling had looked at the state of the Tory party for 30 seconds and changed his mind about the job.
DIVERSITY DIVERSION
Finally – and possibly the most damaging in the long term – the PM made the fatal error of trailing her reshuffle as a major step forward in diversity. Ahead of the big day, Downing Street aides were telling the press how May wanted to “make sure the government reflects the modern and diverse country”. Her junior ministerial team looks to have delivered, but if the Cabinet is anything to go by - and the Cabinet is the primary face of the Government after May herself - the PM has roundly failed in her self-set task. An analysis by the Telegraph says 74% of departmental heads are now male – up from 73% before the moves. Some 35% of those now in post were privately educated, compared with 27% before the shakeup. The Sutton Trust notes that more of them now hold Oxbridge degrees, fewer went to comprehensives and they are five times more likely to have gone to a fee-paying school than the rest of the population. Meanwhile, with the resignation of Greening, the PM lost a female and LGBT member of the Cabinet in a single blunder. Surely a reshuffle that hardly does what it says on the tin is little more than a pointless exercise.
