Bye bye Dave, hello Theresa. Some reshuffle reflections

Originally posted on my Facebook page on the day after David Cameron stepped down as PM and Theresa May took the carving knife to his Cabinet.

1. David Cameron remains a class act. Of course, he had no alternative but to step down after accidentally leading us out of the EU, but nothing in his six-year tenure of the office of Prime Minister became him like the leaving of it. I never voted for the man, and probably never would have done, but he even had me in tears during his leaving speech outside Number Ten, with his references to his family followed by the group hug on the doorstep. It was a reminder that behind all the political drama of recent weeks was a very human story about a family suddenly forced to leave their "lovely" home - in little Florence's case, the only one she had ever known.

2. It is good to see that, despite the post-factual, "we've had enough of experts" spasm of the Brexit vote, experience remains a prized commodity in British politics and that the most experienced candidate for the Conservative leadership eventually won the day. Three of the last four Prime Ministers acceded to the top job in their 40s. Theresa May is 59 and I, for one, find it oddly reassuring that once again we have a Prime Minister and Chancellor who are both older than I am.

3. George Osborne and Michael Gove finally have their just reward for their years of plotting and backstabbing. Theirs is a deeply unpleasant little clique and it is completely understandable that Mrs May saw no place for it in her government. I just hope she doesn't come to regret her failure to abide by Michael Corleone's famous dictum - "keep your friends close, and your enemies closer." Gove and Osborne will be dangerous enemies in the years to come.

4. In terms of other Cabinet departures, I am particularly pleased to see the back of John Whittingdale and Nicky Morgan. Whittingdale's constant efforts to undermine the BBC and attempts to privatise Channel 4 posed an existential threat to two great journalistic and cultural institutions. Similarly Morgan's attempt to force academisation on schools would have wrecked primary education in this country and will hopefully now be consigned to that bit of St James' Park where they can't quite get the mower.

5. Although there have been some well-deserved promotions - Amber Rudd, Justine Greening, James Brokenshire - Mrs May has at times today appeared to value loyalty over ability. There is probably a reason why Damian Green and David Lidington reached the age of 60 without previously achieving Cabinet office. Similarly the appointment of her former Home Office junior Karen Bradley to the culture gig had a whiff of the old chumocracy about it.

6. There are some obvious hospital passes for the Brexiteers Mrs May has promoted. Andrea Leadsom at DEFRA gets the job of explaining to the farmers that Brexit won't leave them better off and that the UK won't be able to pick up all the EU farm subsidies they have enjoyed for so many years. Priti Patel at International Development gets to run a department which, three years ago, she suggested should be abolished.

7. In any reshuffle there is always one bit that doesn't go to plan and this year it concerned Jeremy Hunt. It seems clear he was on his way out of the Department of Health only for rumours of his demise to prove greatly exaggerated. My guess is that Mrs May had someone else in mind for the job and that someone turned it down. Either way an opportunity has been missed to detoxify the junior doctors' dispute by moving a man who has become a hate figure.

8. In terms of reorganising Whitehall departments, Mrs May has made a good start but should have gone further. The Cabinet is far too big and ideally needs to be slimmed down to about 12-15 members. Liam Fox's new international trade role and Priti Patel's international development role should ultimately be combined, as Ms Patel has herself previously suggested. Separate Cabinet ministers for Scotland, Wales, Northern Ireland and English local government are a hangover from the days when everything was run from Whitehall, and should surely be replaced by a single Department for Devolution - although I could understand if Mrs May decided that was one for another day.

9. Looking at the bigger picture, the May government's success or failure will ultimately depend on how it responds to the three key post-Brexit challenges: stablising the economy, refashoning Britain's role in Europe and the world, and preserving the Union. In terms of the first, Philip Hammond is exactly the kind of solid, dependable figure who will reassure the markets and has already announced a welcome shift away from Osbornomics by postponing the deficit reduction target indefinitely. In terms of the second, David Davis is absolutely the right person to negotiate our departure from the EU, and if anyone can refashion Britain's role in the wider world, Boris can.

10. Finally, the Union. Those who know me well know that my principal reason for voting Remain on 23 June was the fear that a Leave vote would break up the UK, and if Mrs May's words outside Number Ten on Wednesday and her decision to visit Scotland today are anything to go by, she shares that concern. The Union is indeed a precious, precious bond, but one which has been stretched to breaking point over the course of the Cameron years. If Mrs May can repair those bonds, and manage not to go down in history as the last Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, I think that will be quite some achievement.

How open is the Labour Party to persuasion?

Cross-posted from Political Betting.

Early on in the Labour leadership battle, Mike [Smithson] drew what I thought was potentially a good analogy between David Cameron’s succesful campaign for the Tory leadership in 2005 and Andy Burnham’s candidature for Labour this time round.

Young Burnham, he surmised, could turn out to be the Cameron of this campaign - a relative unknown coming from behind to win while better-known front-runners faltered.

As it is, Burnham has hardly achieved lift-off. He has fought an oddly Old Labour sort of campaign, of which the last straw - no pun intended, Jack - has been his opposition to the proposed AV referendum which Labour supported in its manifesto.

But that’s not my main point. My question is: is there actually room in this race for any of the candidates to ‘do a Cameron,’ or is the nature of the contest such that the prospect of anyone springing a surprise is already closed-off?

One major difference between this and the Tories’ 2005 race is that the candidates are not being subjected to the pressure-cauldron of a party conference hustings.

When the Tories did this, it enabled them to weed-out a front-runner in David Davis who, whatever his other virtues, was clearly incapable of making a decent platform speech, in favour of someone who wowed his audience by speaking without notes.

Another key difference is the nature of the two parties. As I have pointed out on my own blog, the Tories are historically much more open to making unexpected choices of leader - Margaret Thatcher over Ted Heath in ‘75, William Hague over Ken Clarke in ‘97, Iain Duncan Smith over the same opponent in 2001.

Labour, by contrast, almost always sticks to the front-runner, sometimes because the front-runner is clearly the best candidate (Neil Kinnock in 1983, Tony Blair in 1994) but sometimes out of sentimentality or a resdual belief in ‘Buggins’ Turn.’

My hunch is that most of Labour’s electorate has already made its mind up about this election, and it is now a contest between the brothers. While it is not yet clear which of them will win, it is clear that one of them will.

I’m not sure what current prices are available on Burnham, Ed Balls and Diane Abbott, but whatever they are, my candid advice to PB aficionados would be: ignore them.

A strong-ish and stable government

So, what to make of the new Cabinet line-up unveiled by Nick and Dave (as they are now referring to eachother) earlier today?

On the whole, it looks like a good team. For those of us whose primary concern is to ensure that this is a radical reforming government, the key to it is Nick Clegg's appointment as Deputy Prime Minister with responsibility for constitutional and political reform. This should mean Clegg exercising real influence over the government's political direction, and should ensure he doesn't end up like Geoffrey Howe, for whom the title of DPM was no more than a courtesy.

Other plus points for me include Ken Clarke's move to head up the Justice Ministry - a suitably weighty job for a man who still has much to contribute to British political life - and the return of IDS, who now gets the chance to show that social justice and right-wing Conservatism are not necessarily contradictions in terms.

I'm also naturally delighted to see Chris Huhne given the climate change ministry, given his excellent work in this field on the Lib Dem frontbench prior to his 2007 leaderhsip challenge. Doubtless Matthew Parris will have other views, but Chris is a politician of the first rank and richly deserves this opportunity.

On the downside, I think the Tories have probably hogged one or two jobs for their own people that might justifiably have been given up to brighter Lib Dem talents. What will Owen Paterson bring to the Northern Ireland job that Paddy Ashdown, say, would not have done? What will make 1997 retread Andrew Mitchell a better International Development Secretary than, for instance, Ed Davey or Michael Moore? The need to retain a certain balance between Tories and Lib Dems has militated against having the best people in some areas.

I also think Cameron has missed an opportunity to bring back David Davis, and his failure to do so moreorless condemns the one-time leadership contender to seeing out his career on the backbenches. A pity, because like Ken, he too still has much to give, and his championing of the civil liberties agenda over the past couple of years would appear to be a very good fit with this new government's own priorities in that area.

On a more procedural point, I was surprised to see that the job of Leader of the House of Commons has been relegated to non-Cabinet status. This makes little sense when, in a coalition scenario, good business management will become more, not less, important to the government's fortunes. I was also surprised to see the Scottish, Welsh and Northern Ireland offices all retained even though both parties have at various points in the past called for them to be subsumed within a single Department for Devolution.

Finally, for professional reasons, I was disappointed to see Jeremy Hunt go into DCMS - for what appear to be entirely ideological reasons he has vowed to scrap the independently-funded regional TV news pilots that could have provided a lifeline for the regional press, but doubtless this will be covered in greater depth in the days and weeks to come in another place.

Clegg has played a blinder

Okay, so I would have preferred a Lib-Lab coalition, but the numbers were never really there, the dangers for the Lib Dems in being seen to prop up a defeated party were obvious, and as it became clear today, elements of the Labour Party were not really fully signed up to it anyway, be that out of ideological purism (Diane Abbott), a desire to rub Gordon Brown's nose in it (John Reid, David Blunkett), or positioning for the forthcoming party leadership election (Andy Burnham.)

So instead we have the LibServative option, and on paper, it doesn't seem like a bad outcome. Whatever my own personal feelings, I have said on more than one occasion during this election that the will of the public was probably towards some sort of Con-Lib coalition, and as such I don't think there will be anything like the kind of backlash towards this deal that a Lib-Lab agreement might have attracted.

In terms of policy positions, the initial signs are good, with the Tories have dropped their absurd regressive stance on inheritance tax in favour of the Lib Dem policy of raising thresholds for the worst off, and of course the guarantee of a referendum on the alternative vote which, even if it is likely to be opposed by both main parties, stands a good chance of winning a yes vote from the public.

There also appears to have been a very broad level of agreement between the two parties over civil liberties issues, with the prospect of a 'Freedom Bill' to scrap not only ID cards, but many of Labour's little-used criminal justice measures of the past 13 years.

On personnel, I am obviously delighted to see Nick Clegg as Deputy Prime Minister and it is no less than he deserves for having not only fought a brilliant election campaign, but also for his conduct of the negotiations over the past few days. I am less delighted to see George Osborne move into the Treasury - Ken Clarke, Vince Cable or Phil Hammond would all have been preferable in my eyes - but you can't have everything.

The one outstanding mystery as we approach the early hours surrounds the post of Home Secretary. The absense of any briefing from No 10 clearly indicates that the job is not going to go to Chris Grayling, but may not necessarily mean it is going to Chris Huhne either. Could it be David Davis? If so, that would get the biggest cheer of all from me - the icing on the cake of what looks set to be a liberal government in the classical sense of the term.

Now what about DD?

Reaction to the Tory reshuffle and the return of Ken Clarke has been generally positive today - well, from Tories at least. But as I made clear in this post last Friday, I was hoping David Cameron would have the courage to bite the bullet and invite his old rival David Davis back on board as well.

Although I am not a Tory supporter, I hate to see men and women of geniune ability languishing on the backbenches and if Cameron really wants to put the strongest available alternative government before the electorate in May 2010 he needs to find a place for DD in his team.

What is interesting about the Clarke comeback is that DC and KC have agreed to overlook what is a huge and fundamental policy difference between the two of them over Europe, recognising, quite rightly, that the future of the British economy is currently much more important than that.

By contrast, DC and DD have no major policy differences at all, certainly not on the 42-day detention issue that led to Davis's resignation. Their only difference was a tactical one on how to respond. Sure, Cameron's pride was probably wounded by what happened, but that is no excuse for Davis's continued exclusion.

Now give him his job back, Dave

David Davis says he feels vindicated over the government's decision to scrap its absurd plan to detain terror suspects for 42 days - once touted by the so-called political cognoscenti as the make-or-break issue that would define Gordon's premiership. And so he should.

Meanwhile it is reasonably clear that, for all his obvious intellectual firepower, Dominic Grieve lacks the political clout to shadow a major office of state.

The conclusion ought to be an obvious one for David Cameron: Restore David Davis to the Shadow Home Secretaryship forthwith. Not only would it be right and proper in view of his 42-day triumph, it would also steal some of Brown's thunder in the wake of his astonishing yet still widely-applauded decision to appoint his most implacable political enemy as Business Secretary.

Will Cameron will have the balls to do it? I'm not holding my breath...

Will DC bring DD back?

No, says Iain Dale, who as Davis's close friend and former campaign manager probably knows more than most.

But I'm not so sure. As I've said on Iain's blog, Cameron does not strike me as a vindictive man and if, in time, it becomes clear that bringing back Davis in a senior role would strengthen the team - which in my view it will - I think he'll probably be prepared to let bygones be bygones.

Whereas incoming Labour Prime Ministers are required by the party's own rules to appoint Shadow Cabinet members to the Cabinet - although it didn't stop Tony Blair sacking four of them after a year - there is a fairly long Conservative tradition of bringing in heavyweights from outside whenever the party enters government.

Lord Carrington, chosen as Foreign Secretary from outside the then Shadow Cabinet by Margaret Thatcher in 1979, was an example.

There has been much talk in Tory circles about whether Prime Minister Cameron would bring in, not just DD, but also IDS, Ken Clarke and even Peter Lilley if he wins the next general election.

Such talk is a tacit recognition that the current Shadow Cabinet, while strong on intellect and ideas, is lacking in that indefinable quality that, in the days of Trollope, used to be known as "bottom."

My guess is that at least two of the aforementioned "Big Beasts" will return, and that the first Cameron Cabinet will indeed look fairly different from the current Shadow Cabinet line-up.

The Sweeney rides again

You really couldn't make it up. Just days after my Where Are They Now? profile of former Tory MP Walter Sweeney appears in the launch issue of Total Politics, the bugger decides to make a political comeback. He's one of 25 candidates standing against David Davis in the Haltemprice and Howden by-election on July 10 - but as an independent, not as a Conservative.

I just wonder if Sweeney read Total Politics and decided it was a bit early for people (ie, me) to be writing his political obituary?

A more likely explanation is that it's a revenge match against DD for having masterminded the notorious whipping operation on the Maastricht Bill in 1992 that ended with Sweeney being locked in a House of Commons toilet.

It is also surely significant that Haltemprice and Howden is Sweeney's local consituency. As I pointed out in my Total Politics piece, nowadays he is a local solicitor in the village of North Cave, near Hull.

A waste of a good man

Column published in today's Newcastle Journal on the Davis resignation.

***

Over the course of 20 years or so following and writing about British politics, I can safely say there is nothing that political journalists enjoy more than a good resignation.

For sheer drama, probably none could rival Michael Heseltine’s departure from the Thatcher Cabinet over the Westland affair in 1986.

Emerging from the front door of No 10, he strode across to waiting camera crews and told the world: “I have resigned from the government, and will be making a full statement later today.”

With that he was gone, his beanpole frame receding into the distance along Downing Street as stunned reporters paused for breath.

Mr Heseltine’s exit – though not the matter of it – was half-expected, but for sheer shock value, the sudden resignation of Ron Davies from Tony Blair’s Cabinet in 1998 would be hard to beat.

The Welsh Secretary was obliged to quit after being mugged by a stranger he had met on Clapham Common and agreed to go out for a meal with in what he later called “a moment of madness.”

The resignation of Shadow Home Secretary David Davis on Thursday was both dramatic and unexpected.

But in the longer-run, will it turn out to be a resignation that was soon forgotten, like Ron Davies’s, or one that altered the course of modern political history, like Heseltine’s?

Well, at this juncture, it is hard to tell. Mr Davis’s initial aim appears to have been to use the platform of a by-election to turn the row over 42-day detention into a huge public debate.

With Labour now appearing unlikely to take up the challenge of defending its own policies, it is not at all clear whether this will be achieved.

The contest in Haltemprice and Howden – once the fictional seat of Rik Mayall’s Alan B’Stard – looks set to turn into a one-man crusade by Davis against UKIP, the Monster Raving Loony Party and Sun columnist Kelvin Mackenzie.

It will be an entertaining enough media sideshow, but by this time next month, the wider political agenda may well have moved on to other issues.

Against that, the apparent refusal by Labour to field a candidate will doubtless be fully exploited by Mr Davis as an admission that 42-day detention does not, after all, command public support.

Indeed, he has already said that Gordon Brown would be guilty of “an extraordinary act of cowardice” in not opposing him.

For what it’s worth, I agree with Mr Davis on this point as well as on his wider arguments about the steady erosion of British civil liberties and the growth of the surveillance state.

If Mr Brown really was confident of his ground on 42 days, his attitude should have been: “If he wants an argument about terrorism, he can have one.”

Sure, if Mr Davis were to go on to win big, it would explode the Prime Minister's claim that there is public support for the measure and make it harder for Labour to use the Parliament Act to force it through the Lords.

But equally, if Labour did better than expected, it would puncture the Tory revival and perhaps demonstrate that Mr Brown’s recent difficulties had bottomed-out.

But the politician with the most to fear from a successful and highly-publicised Davis campaign in the East Yorkshire seat is not the Prime Minister, but Tory leader David Cameron.

He now faces the prospect of his old rival returning to the Commons with a thumping personal mandate and the potential to become a focus for discontent on the backbenches.

For there is no doubt that the kind of issues being championed by Mr Davis resonate widely not just within the Tory Party but also among the wider public.

In his dramatic statement outside the Commons on Thursday, Mr Davis railed not just 42-day detention but also ID cards, CCTV cameras, the DNA database and restrictions to jury trial.

Another of his bugbears is the march of political correctness, and the implications which this has for freedom of expression and other historic liberties.

If Mr Davis can make himself the focus for popular discontent about these “libertarian” type issues, his leader will face an awkward dilemma over what to do with him.

The smart move for Mr Cameron in those circumstances might be to swallow his pride and welcome Mr Davis back inside the tent.

But it already seems clear from his comments about the "permanent" appointment of Dominic Grieve as Shadow Home Secretary that he does not intend to do that.

If so, it will be more good news for the government, given Mr Davis’s awesome effectiveness in the role of Shadow Home Secretary since 2003.

During that time he has personally seen-off three Labour ministers - Beverley Hughes over work permits for one-legged Romanian roofers, David Blunkett over the Kimberley Quinn affair, and Charles Clarke over the release of foreign offenders.

If Mr Davis is not to be Home Secretary in the next Conservative government, it would, in my view, be a loss not only to the party but to the country.

He is one of the few big personalities left in an increasingly monochrome House of Commons and had he been a more effective platform orator, I am certain he would now be the country’s putative next Prime Minister.

He was the overwhelming favourite to win the Tory leadership in 2005, but lost it in the space of half an hour with a conference speech that was as dreadful as Mr Cameron’s was inspired.

That he now appears set to end his career as a Powell-like figure crying in the wilderness seems, to me, a waste of a rare talent.

Labour should stand and fight

The talk is that Labour is set to piss on David Davis's bonfire and emulate the Lib Dems by refusing to run a candidate in the forthcoming Haltemprice and Howden by-election. This would be a serious missed opportunity for two reasons.

Firstly, it presents a chance for Gordon and the party to take a stand on a serious issue of principle with very little political risk attached. The attitude should be: "If David Davis wants a debate about terrorism, let him have one."

The worst than can happen is the part will lose the by-election - which everyone expects it to anyway - but if it's true that Labour is closer to public opinion on this issue than the Tories, they might actually do much better than anticipated.

But there is a deeper, more devious reason why Labour should play along with Davis's game for now - because it is not in fact in Gordon Brown's political interests for the former Shadow Home Secretary's bonfire to be pissed on.

In fact, if anything the Prime Minister should be busily pouring petrol on the flames. The more publicity that Davis's by-election stunt attracts, the more awkward it will make it for David Cameron

I'd even go so far as to say it's a win-win situation for Brown. Either Davis does worse than expected, which will puncture the Tory revival, or he returns to the Commons with a thumping majority to make more mischief for Dave.

It is clear to me from DC's coments about the "permanent" appointment of Dominic Grieve that he does not intend to bring Davis back into the Shadow Cabinet, which is even better news for Labour.

Not only has the Tory frontbench now lost its star performer, but he is set to return as a Michael Heseltine-type figure on the backbenches. Gordon will be a happier man tonight.