Monday’s speech and today’s announcement show them choosing their ground for the next election. And since Hunt may find no money for further tax cuts next spring, the option of a May general election is opening up.
The number of possibilities teaches us three lessons about politics today. Firstly, never to underestimate the role played by mere chance. Secondly, that this is not an age of great leaders who make their own luck. And, thirdly, that we need to choose more carefully in future.
If you bluntly tell your officials to do their jobs, you are accused of bullying; if, like Braverman, you are by nature polite, you find yourself undermined in other ways.
He could look again at short sentences. I wanted to scrap them – they are counter-productive in reducing reoffending and cause a great deal of disruption to prisons.
The Conservative Party seems to be allergic to *doing things*, whether that be building houses, securing a cheap and plentiful supply of energy, prosecuting and locking up criminals, or securing our borders.
Since 2010, the Party has a truly terrible record of retaining its reformers – especially those capable of understanding and reshaping the structures of government.
As Graham Stringer, a Labour MP, told GB News: “I find effectively civil servants sacking a minister, which is what has happened, quietly disturbing because one of the great myths in our political life is that we have a non-political civil service”.
I do not believe there are conspiracies by officials to stop this or any other Government from getting on with its business. But there are deep-seated problems in how government works. Here are three issues that need to be tackled.
Still less are civil servants paid to do so rather than getting on with the job – which taxpayers fund.
If politicians come to believe that the civil service is preoccupied with speaking truth to power at the expense of doing its job, Francis Maude-type solutions will be imposed, regardless of which party is in power.
He says the Prime Minister expects the ‘very highest standards’ from the civil service.
Whether the ex-Deputy Prime Minister is a habitual rotter who has received his just deserts, or a hard-working minister bullied out of office by snowflake civil servants, depends first on your opinion of the man, and then on how you define bullying.
Alex Chalk has become Justice Secretary. Number 10 have also announced that Chloe Smith will take over for Michelle Donelan as Secretary of State for Science, Innovation, and Technology during the latter’s maternity leave.
Our system of government is broken, and voters feel powerless. Only a radical overhaul of Whitehall can address these problems.