THERESA MAY
CONSERVATIVE PARTY
Until a few days ago, it looked like
Brexit was going to be defined
and implemented by its enemies.
The team that led Britain out of the
European Union had vanished; their
careers destroyed by their uselessness
at the basic art of parliamentary
plotting. Theresa May walked into No
10 unopposed, backed by allies of
George Osborne.
The bookmakers had him down as
favourite to be the next Foreign
Secretary, and many MPs feared that
a deal had been done – that the most
momentous vote in British history
would be followed by very little
change at the top.
How different it all looks now. Mr
Osborne has been sacked and Boris
Johnson has been appointed to the job
instead. It’s an inspired appointment,
a Foreign Secretary able to explain to
the world the positive vision of Brexit
that he so successfully advocated
during the referendum campaign.
He’ll be able to tell a story of an
optimistic country, tugging at the
leash fitted upon it by the European
Union. A nation that welcomes
immigrants, but would quite like the
ability to control immigration. Britain
needs a global salesman, who makes
an impact when he visits. And no one
has ever accused Mr Johnson of failing
to do that.
The European Union’s diplomats may
well want to snarl at Britain in the
negotiations, when they start. So Mrs
May has sent them David Davis, the
most cheerful bruiser in the House of
Commons, as the head Brexit
negotiator .
Meanwhile, the task of striking new
trade deals with faraway nations will
not be held by a minister (like Philip
Hammond) who never really thought it
possible, but by Liam Fox. He’s a
globally-minded Brexiteer whose idea
of perfect happiness is a week of back-
to-back diplomatic functions on the
other side of the world.
Mrs May might never be able to speak
with conviction about the
opportunities of Brexit, but she has
just hired three Cabinet members who
can.
She might not actually need all three,
but their recruitment does wonders
for party unity. On Monday, after
Andrea Leadsom dropped out of the
leadership race, some MPs were
muttering about a Conservative Party
split due to the failure of the
Brexiteers.
On Wednesday night, champagne
bottles were on the tables of the House
of Commons terrace as those same
Eurosceptics toasted Mrs May’s
premiership. They have got their wish:
and it amazes them as much as
everyone else.
On Thursday morning, there was
another, more sombre, gathering:
David Cameron and George Osborne
sitting outside in a Notting Hill café
reading the newspapers and consoling
each other. Both will bitterly regret
ever having seen Mrs May as the
continuity candidate.
David Cameron and George Osborne enjoy
coffee and pastries together at a cafe in north
Kensington
She routed the Tory modernisers
yesterday, sacking anyone who was
seen to be associated with the project
regardless of their position on Brexit.
Michael Gove is gone, as are ministers
who supported his doomed leadership
bid. Nick Boles has quit. Nicky
Morgan, an effective Education
Secretary and a onetime leadership
hopeful, has been sent packing.
It’s no secret that Mrs May had her
doubts about Tory modernisation,
seeing it as a posh boy’s project aimed
at making the Tories more acceptable
at London dinner parties. But it’s hard
to reconcile this caricature with the
fruits of the Cameron project: falling
inequality, the incomes of the lowest-
paid rising the most, a revolution in
state schools helping the poorest.
Even for those who have never been
quite sold on Tory modernisation
(myself included), the extent of Mrs
May's bloodletting is alarming. These
are still young men, who shaped the
party for the last 10 years. They had
plenty of experience in government,
plenty still to offer. But they have
been dumped, en masse.
To look at the casualties of Mrs May’s
reshuffle, it’s as if she spent years in
Cabinet meetings looking around the
table and dreaming about the day
she’d dispatch this crop of privately-
educated young Tories back to Notting
Hill to cry into their cappuccinos.
All this would make more sense if Mrs
May wanted somehow to root out their
ideology, in the same way that Gordon
Brown’s allies sought a purge of the
Blairites. But from what she has said,
she intends to build on what Cameron
sought to achieve: focusing
Conservatism towards the poorest, and
winning Labour voters by
emphasising the progressive nature of
Tory mission.
They share the same aim, but the
means are starting to look rather
different. The emergence of a
department for “industrial strategy”
suggests that Mrs May is about to
attempt a policy rather more
interventionist than the Cameroons
would have tolerated.
This suggests Ed Miliband-style plans
to boss companies around, and tell
them who they should have on their
boards. When Sajid Javid became
Business Secretary, he dropped the
phrase “industrial strategy”;
government, he said, should not be so
vain as to think it can set out
strategies for business. On Thursday,
he was demoted to the role of
Communities Secretary.
So if she were to depart from the
Cameron approach and start reviving
1970s ideas about having workers sit
in company boards, who in her
Cabinet would protest? Anyone on the
Tory Right has been kept well away
from anything to do with business or
economics.
The only real answer is the super-dry
Philip Hammond, the Chancellor, who
is also her closest ally in the Cabinet.
Their friendship is likely to overcome
any policy differences – perhaps one
of the main reasons that he was
chosen.
Her reshuffle seems to have
eliminated anything that might grow
into a power base. The modernisers
are more likely to quit politics
altogether than rebel against her in
parliament. Boris will be off charming
Canadian talk-show hosts or rugby-
tackling Japanese schoolboys. The Tory
Right will be chewing on the bone of
Brexit.
And this is where her reshuffle starts
to make the most sense. It’s not that
the new Prime Minister loves
Brexiteers and dislikes posh boys. She
just likes a government that she can
manage. She doesn’t like surprises or
arguments, and is suspicious of
ministers with too many grand ideas
of their own – and the Tory
modernisers specialised in those.
All of these modernising ideas
certainly had their uses: they appear
to have formed about three-quarters
of Theresa May’s agenda. But she is
now out to complete David Cameron’s
mission of “one nation” Toryism
without the help of Mr Cameron, or
any of his friends.
Comments
Post a Comment