A prime minister, facing conspirators inside and out, takes a beating in local elections. He then chooses to reshuffle the Cabinet for him the next day, in an attempt to “reset” the entire Government for him and show that he is still the man in charge.
Well, that is exactly what happened in May 2006 when Tony Blair reacted to Labour’s loss of 319 council seats and control of 17 city councils. Within hours of the pre-dawn results, Blair executed 15 sweeping changes to his cabinet, including a new Foreign Secretary, Home Secretary and Education Secretary.
Back then, despite Blair having won a general election shortly before, there was a growing clamor to replace him.
Home Secretary Charles Clarke was ousted over a dispute over foreign prisoners. Jack Straw was transferred from the Foreign Office, an act some saw as the prime minister deflecting blame for his own decisions on Iraq. John Prescott was stripped of departmental responsibilities after an affair with his secretary. Hazel Blears became the new president of the party.
So is Boris Johnson tempted to do the same after this week’s local elections? In some ways, the parallels are strange with 16 years ago, not least with a Home Secretary under heavy pressure in an “unfit for purpose” department, a party chairman with too much on his plate, and the prospect of worrying losses. in the key heart of the party. (especially in the south).
Some Conservative MPs say talk has now started in earnest about a Johnson reshuffle to bounce back from the midterms, ahead of a new speech from the Queen next week setting out a serious program to ‘level’ and deliver on the bread and the butter. issues.
And the big difference between Johnson and Blair is that the Labor prime minister was rarely in a position to move his chancellor. After Rishi Sunak’s disastrous weeks, with revelations about his wife’s non-dom status, her cost of living kicking up, her fine for breaking the No 10 Covid rule, and her own US green card status, it’s widely seen in the Tory party as at risk of being sacked or reshuffled to a new job.
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Amidst the talk that Johnson could “do a Blair”, a Tory MP tells me that the prime minister’s allies have been privately discussing replacing Sunak with Liz Truss. This would be in a “job swap” in which the Chancellor would move to Foreign Secretary or in the event that Sunak wants to withdraw from the Cabinet altogether after the pressures of recent weeks.
“Boris wants the first female chancellor to be a Conservative and Liz makes no secret that she would love the job,” said the MP. “She also gives Rishi a way to save face if she goes to Foreign. But to be honest, he can walk anyway. He looks like a broken man when you see him up close.” One MP said Sunak “didn’t want to rock the boat during the [local election] campaign”, but after May 6 the picture may look different.
One MP added that the plan may be a good way for the prime minister to neutralize the threat also posed to him by his colleagues. “He wants Liz to start saying ‘no’ to her colleagues because it will hurt her leadership prospects. As Chancellor you have to say ‘no’, Rishi found that out the hard way.” A former minister said: “The smartest thing Boris did was to make Sunak own NI [National Insurance] get up, he was doomed ever since.
MPs consider Nadhim Zahawi ripe for further promotion, most likely moving to replace Priti Patel. “Nadhim to Home Sec[retary] It gives Boris a good way to move Priti to the party presidency, but apparently she doesn’t want it,” said one MP. On his recent trip to India, Johnson also did not eliminate speculation about a possible reorganization. There is also pressure to appoint more women to cabinet to show that the party is defined neither by porn nor by “Pestminster”.
Of course, the mere threat of a reshuffle is often a powerful way for a sitting prime minister to try to keep his rogue troops at bay, with the prospect of promotion for those who remain loyal. And staging a reshuffle also makes enemies, with would-be new recruits fired or passed over for the campaign to write letters of censure.
There is the added complication of changing foreign ministers during the Ukraine crisis. Replacing Patel with Zahawi at the Home Office could inject new energy, though MPs are torn between allegiance to his tough messages and frustration at how little has been done under his watch to prevent things like Channel crossings.
As for Blair, her shake-up didn’t exactly work out so well. But it was revealing that she used it to try to plot the future. David Miliband was quietly moved into the Cabinet for the first time. And the day after he fired him, Blair told Charles Clarke that he really wanted to make him foreign secretary and a credible contender to take on Gordon Brown.
As for the whole internal Blair-Brown war, there is another curious link to the present day. Partygate means that Johnson is the first prime minister to be fined for breaking the law while he was in office. In 2006, Blair had his own run-in with the police as they investigated “honour lending” allegations.
In his memoirs, Blair claimed that Brown offered to go easy on the accusations in exchange for abandoning pension reforms he opposed. Blair refused and, in the end, a Brown ally called for an internal Labor investigation. It was a betrayal that he did not forget.
The most compelling parallel this week, however, is the number of council seats a vulnerable incumbent prime minister can afford to lose. Blair’s reshuffle was triggered by the loss of 319 councillors. Scarily, around 300 seats is Professor John Curtice’s estimate so the polls suggest Johnson could lose this Thursday (although he says we should focus on percentage of votes, not seats).
Johnson is famous for not wanting to fire any of his best teams. However, he also has a sense of cruelty and a desire to get ahead of the narrative, before there are more Partygate revelations. The Tory backbench bush telegraph is definitely twitching.
Even if it doesn’t take place in the next few days, a “reset” reshuffle is seen as the final piece of the prime minister’s “counterattack” puzzle. Whether enough of his parliamentarians and ministers are prepared to keep him as leader is another question entirely.
Reference-inews.co.uk