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THERESA MAY’S LONG-awaited government reshuffle was branded ineffectual and shambolic after she promoted few fresh faces to her top team and a minister resigned rather than accept a new post.
Education Secretary Justine Greening became the fourth minister to leave the Cabinet since November, after resisting a request to move to the welfare and pensions ministry.
Meanwhile, health minister Jeremy Hunt convinced May at the last minute to scrap plans to move him to the business department.
Most of her senior ministers also kept their jobs in the reshuffle, including Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson, Brexit minister David Davis and finance minister Philip Hammond.
The prime minister carried out what her office called a “refresh” of the government after sacking her deputy Damian Green last month in a row over pornography found on his computer in 2008.
His departure followed those of the defence and aid ministers in unrelated scandals the previous month.
May hoped the shakeup would help her reassert authority ahead of crunch Brexit negotiations this year, after a 2017 during which she lost a parliamentary majority in a snap election.
An interim deal on Brexit in December appeared to give her new impetus, and the much-anticipated reshuffle was arranged.
But the day began in a farcical fashion when her Conservative party announced a new chairman on Twitter, only to delete the tweet and later name another lawmaker for the post.
“No wonder Theresa May’s struggling to negotiate Brexit, she can’t even organise a reshuffle,” opposition Labour MP Stephen Kinnock swiftly tweeted.
Following Hunt’s reported refusal to move and Greening’s resignation yesterday, Britain’s newspapers were quick to attack May’s reboot.
The Times’ front page called the reshuffle ”shambolic” while The Daily Telegraph declared it the “night of the blunt stiletto”.
Some Conservative lawmakers appeared to agree, with Tory grandee Nicholas Soames tweeting: “I don’t mean to be rude or to be seen to be disloyal but there needs to be a major improvement to the reshuffle tomorrow.”
May is expected to announce a reshuffle of her lower government ranks today.
Fragile authority
Greening’s resignation is likely to be viewed as a challenge to the prime minister’s already fragile authority.
She was offered the welfare ministry “but declined to take it,” a Downing Street source said.
“The prime minister is disappointed but respects her decision to leave the government”, the source added.
For her part Greening said in a tweet that educational issues like social mobility matter “more than my ministerial career”, and vowed to continue to work for young people as a member of parliament.
May’s room for manoeuvre is limited by heading a minority government and the need to maintain a delicate Cabinet balance of eurosceptic and pro-European ministers as major Brexit decisions loom.
After starting the two-year withdrawal process in March last year, Britain struck a deal in December on the financial settlement with Brussels, as well as on expatriate rights and the Irish border.
Negotiations on a transition deal begin this month, while the toughest talks, on Britain’s future relationship with the EU including trade, are set to start in March.
Johnson, a leading Brexit supporter, kept his job at the foreign office, despite challenging May’s strategy last year, as did fellow eurosceptic Liam Fox, the international trade minister.
Finance minister Hammond and interior minister Amber Rudd, who campaigned to stay in the EU, continue as before.
Former justice secretary David Lidington took over the policy coordination role previously held by Green but did not inherit the title of May’s deputy.
Northern Ireland Secretary James Brokenshire, who failed to secure a deal to restore the power-sharing government in Belfast after it collapsed a year ago, stepped down for health reasons Monday and has been replaced by culture minister Karen Bradley.
The former Conservative party chairman, Patrick McLoughlin, lost his job after the disastrous snap election.
It was one of several low points last year for the prime minister, who took office in July 2016 after the referendum on leaving the EU and began her tenure strongly with a bold Cabinet reshuffle.
With reporting by © – AFP, 2018
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“The problem with capitalism is you eventually run out of people to rip off” – Clem Attlee
He didn’t actually say that, but it’s true.
The Tory’s have run the UK into the ground, and enriched themselves, as much as they can. The people have copped onto the con.
Corbyn for PM.
@Franklin Roosevelt:
Another way is the problem with democracy.
Parties and people get elected gitctheir selfless short term gain at the expense of generations by decisions and back room deals done to keep these clowns in government
@Franklin Roosevelt:
Corbyn? , the same Corbyn who considers Hamas and Hezbollah his “friends”.
@Franklin Roosevelt:
and someone else said the trouble with socialism is that eventually you run out of other people’s money – which is also true. Socialism has a 100% failure record wherever it has been used.
“Socialism in general has a record of failure so blatant that only an intellectual could ignore or evade it.” – Thomas Sowell
Free trade, or as Marx called it, capitalism, has lifted a third of the world out poverty. It’s what’s keeping Ireland’s head above water. Corporatism and bad banking and financial practice overseen by inept and complicit government has laid low some economies, not free trade.
@Eleanor of Aquitaine: The same Corbyn who stands with the oppressed people of Palestine, who stands against apartheid Israel.
@Brian MacCarthaigh:
What Apartheid?
Do you then consider Hamas and Hezbollah as your “friends”?
It Doesn’t surprise me about Corbyn as Communists and Islamic terrorists go hand in hand
@Eleanor of Aquitaine: ah you’d rather the people selling arms to Saudi Arabia to help cause a genocide in Yemen. Gotcha.
Honestly, how can people like you still think socialism will work? It’s been tried, over and over, in different countries, on different continents, and the only things it has consistently achieved are abject failure and a reduction in living standards for those that live under it. At the same time free market capitalism has been lifting entire populations out of poverty and has resulted in meteoric rises in living standards for all over the past century or so. Why do you cling to an ideology that has been a proven failure? Why would this time be any different to the hundreds of other times?
@Deborah Behan:
What are you on about, and how did pull that from my comments?
Capitalism isn’t perfect but it’s the best we have today, Communists fail to see the failure that Communism is, grand on paper though but not in practice, Ask any Venezuelan. Got that.
The worse thing is she has arlene the dinosaur propping the british government up
@dick dastardly: poor Arlene and the DUP just want Northern Ireland to be treated the same as the rest of Britain…
Except for same sex marriage, abortion, language rights, etc.
Then, they are entitled to their “proyd Protestant tradishun!”
@Franklin Roosevelt: northern Ireland is not “the rest of Britain”
I’m sure that was a freudian slip ;-)
@Franklin Roosevelt: ‘the rest of Britain’? NI isn’t in Britain
The circus continues….
Of course it was shambolic. The one person who she REALLY needed to shift, to make sure he knew his place — Johnson — was deemed untouchable. He has done by far the most to undermine her authority. If she wasn’t willing to at least try and move him, why even bother with the reshuffle.
Jeremy Hunt wants to stay put because he hasn’t completely destroyed the NHS yet.
They really look like a bunch of misfits.
Like characters out of the “Office.
Ricky gervais.
She must be running out of lunatics to help her run the asylum.
Where are Barnum & Bailey ?
Such a pity our Irish ministers don’t put their constituents first and resign. Never likely to happen given their greed
@Bat Collins: god you’re so boring. This story has nothing to do with Ireland !
May is pretty safe for 2018. Would love to see an election and a Labour government but highly unlikely…
https://www.abitleftandabitlost.com/posts/2018-predictions
http://www.abitleftandabitlost.com/posts/what-can-end-theresa-mays-time-as-prime-minister
@ABitLeftandaBitLost: __ She’ll just plod on being the Brexit Patsy unless she resigns out of spite, and another Patsy gets lumbered with the job.
@Ted Murray: Exactly, I just find it surreal how a politician who is basically perceived by the whole political spectrum top be weak and doing a poor job is practically guaranteed another 12-15 months as leader of her party and country…
Not so much a re-boot, more like just another kick in the arse.
have your say