Uk politics

Tuesday

Isabel Hardman

Jo Johnson’s ministerial move is the latest in a strange reshuffle

Jo Johnson hasn’t had the best week. He’s spent most of it defending the decision to appoint Toby Young to the advisory board of the Office for Students – and was doing so yesterday afternoon, just hours before Young resigned. Now Johnson has been moved to the Transport department, and with an additional post as Minister for London. This is the latest strange move in a strange reshuffle. Johnson set up the Office for Students and had been making headlines over his confrontations with university vice chancellors over pay and free speech. He was also the minister who took the legislation setting up the new Office for Students through Parliament.

Steerpike

Caption contest: Too many vegetables not enough meat

It’s the morning after the night before and Theresa May’s newly reshuffled Cabinet has just held its first meeting. Only there might not be much of a need for introductions given that the Cabinet hasn’t changed all that much. Despite a brief game of musical chairs, the big beasts remain when it comes to the great offices of state. Shame the Prime Minister couldn’t fit in the picture… Captions in the comments please. Update: … and the winner is ‘too many vegetables not enough meat’

Tom Goodenough

Theresa May’s Cabinet reshuffle in full | 9 January 2018

Theresa May’s reshuffle has been somewhat underwhelming so far, but with a raft of junior ministerial appointments set to be announced today the Prime Minister still has an opportunity to shake things up. Here are all the movers – and non-movers – announced so far. We’ll keep this updated throughout the day as more appointments are made: Today’s ministerial changes: Appointments: Nusrat Ghani  becomes Assistant Government Whip Wendy Morton becomes Assistant Government Whip Jo Churchill becomes Assistant Government Whip Amanda Milling  becomes Assistant Government Whip Mims Davies  becomes Assistant Government Whip Kelly Tolhurst becomes Assistant Government Whip Shailesh Vara becomes Parliamentary Under Secretary of State at Northern Ireland Office Suella

Toby Young

Toby Young: Why I’m resigning from the Office for Students

I have decided to stand down from the Office for Students. My appointment has become a distraction from its vital work of broadening access to higher education and defending academic freedom. Education is my passion and I want now to be able to get on with the work I have been doing to promote and support the free schools movement. These schools have already done a huge amount to raise standards in some of England’s most deprived areas and the next challenge is to extend those benefits to every area of educational underperformance. The caricature drawn of me in the last seven days, particularly on social media, has been unrecognisable to

Monday

James Forsyth

Theresa May’s political recovery stalls

Today’s reshuffle was meant to demonstrate Theresa May’s return to political health. But it hasn’t worked out that way. This reshuffle has been chaotic even by the standards of these things. I can’t remember an official Twitter account getting the first appointment of the day wrong before. It has also advertised the limitations to May’s authority. She has not got her own way on several appointments either because of a minister declining a move (Jeremy Hunt) or refusing to take the job they were offered (Justine Greening). The appointment of Caroline Nokes as Immigration Minister attending Cabinet is also bizarre. Before today, who thought she was the right person to

Katy Balls

Wanted: the meaning of Theresa May’s reshuffle

On Monday morning, Theresa May’s reshuffle looked as though it was shaping up to be the day of the blunt knives. Some clumsy social media use saw CCHQ falsely crown Chris Grayling as the new Conservative Party Chairman – before it was announced as Brandon Lewis. Since then, things have slowed down considerably. As the day wore on, ‘the Cabinet reshuffle that wasn’t’ appeared a more fitting description. Despite briefings about ‘dead wood’ in the Cabinet, only a few ministers have changed brief – David Gauke has been appointed the new Justice Secretary and Karen Bradley Northern Ireland Secretary. What’s more, it’s hard to find anyone who has been unceremoniously

Isabel Hardman

Reshuffles can often make matters much worse

As with most reshuffles, today’s is being viewed largely as a test of the Prime Minister’s strength. Will she move the ministers who aren’t working well in their current posts? Will she underwhelm with what she eventually manages to do? Will she accidentally appoint Chris Grayling to another job for 30 seconds? So far, that test of strength isn’t going so well, with the attention largely focusing on deleted tweets and people getting out of cars. It’s easy on reshuffle day to forget the impact that moving ministers around has on government. Not just in the sense that we can tell how powerful the Prime Minister really is as a

Steerpike

CCHQ social media fail over new party chairman

Oh dear. The new Conservative party chairman has a job on their hands transforming CCHQ into a digitally-savvy campaign machine. So, it’s safe to say, that things haven’t got off to the best start for the new chairman. The CCHQ Twitter feed announced Chris Grayling as the new chairman: However, just moments later the tweet was deleted. The reason? It’s not clear that Grayling is the man for the job – his rival Brandon Lewis has just walked into No 10!

Steerpike

Anne Milton’s Wikipedia edited from Parliament ahead of reshuffle

Theresa May’s reshuffle is imminent. Although Cabinet’s big beasts are thought to be safe, Justine Greening and Greg Clark are among those in the hot seat. As for promotion, Jeremy Hunt is tipped to be appointed First Secretary of State. If this were to happen, a new Health Secretary would be needed. There has been speculation in the media that Hunt’s two likely successors are Dr Philip Lee and Anne Milton. Milton is a former nurse, working as for the NHS for 25 years. So, surely, complete coincidence that Milton’s Wikipedia page has been edited ‘anonymously’ from Parliament this morning. The change? Clarifying Milton’s husband’s former role as a director of Virgin

Steerpike

Andrea Leadsom tempts fate

It’s reshuffle day – and the ministers thought to be in the danger zone include Justine Greening, Greg Clark, Patrick McLoughlin and Andrea Leadsom. So, with that in mind, one has to admire the decision by Leadsom to write an article for today’s Times’ Red Box on her priorities as Leader of the House of Commons for 2018. ‘Since the general election I’ve been overseeing the preparation of further bills which we will bring forward over the coming 12 months. In 2018 it will be parliament that supports the most exciting advances our country is making. We will back the development of electric vehicles and the growth of the UK’s space

The Spectator

Cabinet reshuffle: Justine Greening quits the Cabinet

Theresa May’s reshuffle is underway. Here are the key points so far: Justine Greening has quit the government; Damian Hinds is the new Education Secretary David Gauke becomes the Lord Chancellor and Secretary of State for Justice Esther McVey becomes work and pension secretary Karen Bradley is the new Northern Ireland Secretary after James Brokenshire resigns due to ill health Matt Hancock is the new Culture Secretary David Lidington appointed minister for the Cabinet Office Claire Perry is the new minister of state for business Brandon Lewis is new Tory party chairman following confusion over Chris Grayling‘s reported appointment. James Cleverly is new Tory party deputy chair Jeremy Hunt, Philip Hammond, Greg Clark, Boris Johnson, David Davis, Gavin Williamson and

Sunday

Carrie Gracie

Equal pay matters – that’s why I have resigned as BBC China Editor

I have been a BBC journalist for three decades. With great regret, I have left my post as China Editor to speak out publicly on a crisis of trust at the BBC. The BBC belongs to you, the licence fee payer. I believe you have a right to know that it is breaking equality law and resisting pressure for a fair and transparent pay structure. In thirty years at the BBC, I have never sought to make myself the story and never publicly criticised the organisation I love. I am not asking for more money. I believe I am very well paid already – especially as someone working for a

Fraser Nelson

Announcing a change to Toby Young’s Spectator column

A few years ago, we had a bit of a problem with Toby Young’s column – one that never quite went away. He started writing for us regularly shortly after he’d written a book called How to Lose Friends and Alienate People about his complete failure to make it big in New York. His column was called Status Anxiety and the idea was to showcase his self-deprecating humour, while exposing the pieties of those who take themselves and high society too seriously. From the offset, readers loved it. But in the last few years, Toby’s life has taken a different turn. He dedicated himself to setting up new schools for

Isabel Hardman

Theresa May’s new year has been more difficult than it should have been

Given everything that happened to her in 2017, Theresa May could be starting this year in a far worse position. But that’s not to say that she hasn’t started in in the best position in the circumstances, either. That the Prime Minister and her team recognise this seemed apparent from her decision to pre-record her Andrew Marr interview, rather than appear live and chance being asked about new awkward stories in the Sunday papers. Perhaps booking a pre-recorded interview is a sign that Number 10 has a bit more of a clue than it did in the months after the snap election, but only really in the sense that it

Steerpike

Must Toby Young’s role in creating schools now be held against him?

The furore over Toby Young’s appointment to the board of the Office for Students (OfS) shows no sign of dying down. The Mail on Sunday splashes on a series of ‘sexist and obscene tweets’ sent by Young – reporting the Prime Minister’s apparent ‘distaste’. Now it seems that some can’t even accept Young’s work in education which contributed to his appointment. Appearing on the Andrew Marr show this morning, the Guardian‘s Polly Toynbee came up with a new line of attack. Toynbee complained that Young had only founded the free school that led to his OfS appointment because ‘he wanted to create a school for his kids’. Happily, Mr S’s colleague Fraser Nelson

Saturday

James Forsyth

3 New Year’s resolutions for Theresa May

In The Sun today, I propose three New Year’s resolutions for Theresa May. She should be decisive on Brexit, bold on housing and try and fix social care. None of these will be easy; and all three of them will be made more difficult by her mistakes in 2017. But if the Tories don’t make progress on these fronts in the next 12 months, Jeremy Corbyn will be that much closer to Downing Street. May’s visibility this week—reiterating her desire to be the Prime Minister who fixes the housing crisis and apologising to NHS patients who have had their operations cancelled—shows she wants to hit the ground running. The reshuffle

Mark Piggott

London’s crime map tells a damning tale of two cities

It’s just a few metres from Bartholomew Court, EC1, where a young man was one of four stabbed to death over the New Year, to trendy Hoxton, famous for its cereal bars and hirsute hipsters. It would be easy to say these two worlds – those of the trendy media types lampooned by ‘Nathan Barley’ and ‘Its Grim up North London’ and the large nearby estates – are separated by an unbridgeable gulf, but it would also be inaccurate. Areas like Hoxton became popular in part because of this edginess, this picturesque urban decay, where drugs can be bought cheaply from local youths and consumed in the safety of the

Sarah Vine

Jeremy Corbyn’s silence on Iran is deafening

In Iran, women have had their lives dictated by ill-intentioned men for years now, as have homosexuals and anyone who dares oppose the hardline Islamic regime there. At last that nation’s downtrodden people seem to have found the strength and courage to rise up. No thanks, it must be said, to that self-styled champion of the oppressed, Jeremy Corbyn who, as men, women and children were laying their lives on the line in Tehran, maintained a deafening silence on the issue. Meanwhile, Labour trolls turned their attention to a far more pressing outrage: the appointment of a Conservative to a government quango. Toby Young’s addition to the board of the

Friday

Katy Balls

Can Theresa May’s reshuffle live up to the hype?

Theresa May is expected to reshuffle her Cabinet early next week. Unfortunately for Theresa May, she’s been expected to do this since before Christmas – after she refrained from appointing a new First Secretary of State in light of Damian Green’s forced resignation/sacking. This means the reshuffle has dominated the news agenda for several weeks now. Each day this month, there have been several – often conflicting – stories about what the Prime Minister plans to do in the upcoming reshuffle. Depending who you believe, Boris Johnson may be moved or not moved, David Davis is in trouble, Jeremy Hunt is to be appointed Secretary of State (or to the

Isabel Hardman

Should we blame patients for the NHS crisis?

The whose-fault-is-the-NHS-crisis game has taken some strange twists and turns this week, with the debate bouncing from patients costing the health service £1bn last year to Jeremy Hunt having to apologise to patients for cancelling their non-urgent procedures as a result of the increased pressures on hospitals. Political debate tends to prefer black-and-white and easily identifiable scapegoats, but the health service is too complex for that. Take the missed appointments story. Yes, patients failing to turn up cost the health service a staggering amount. But who are those patients? It turns out that the most likely people to do what the NHS classes as a ‘DNA’ (did not attend) are