Shockwaves from the speech disaster are still feel being felt. Grant Shapps was on Radio 4 this morning, urging an immediate leadership contest. “We can’t go on like this” he said. While Tory MPs are loath to have an election for a new leader just this second, May is starting to make it more likely than not. Yet there is one way she can possibly save herself and buy her party some time: she needs to reshuffle the cabinet, big time and right now.
The logic for this is that she moves aside some deadwood (Boris and let’s face it, several others) in order to make room for the next generation. This is so some fresh faces get some government experience, widening the field for who can become the next Tory leader. There are several problems with having a leadership contest right now, but one of them is that all of the newer, younger MPs who might be able to resuscitate the Conservative Party aren’t in the cabinet at present, so having them contend to be prime minister would be a huge stretch. May needs to solve this problem for her party by picking a few of the best and brightest and giving them reasonably high profile briefs.
This way there is also an excuse for her hanging around that isn’t just inertia: she is preparing the ground for the next Tory premiership to be a success. Since June 2017, she has been terrified of moving anyone lest it trigger her downfall – she needs to get out of that mind set. If she stays where she is she might well be gone before Christmas; bringing the next generation into the cabinet so that one of them can become PM gives the remainder of her premiership some residual meaning. As I’ve said before, the Tories still have the bandwidth to turn things around and prevent Jeremy Corbyn from becoming prime minister; that’s no use to them if they don’t use any of it. If they stay where they are, they really are doomed. May needs to realise sooner rather than later that this need not be the case.
Replace May by all means, but with who? Problem for the Tories is that they are heavily split at the moment with half the party wanting Boris and the other half wanting anyone but Boris – then on top of that there’s the whole problem of Brexit – who in there right mind is going to want to sort out that mess?
A reshuffle is easier said than done and does not necessarily benefit the Prime Minister. Back in 1962 Harold MacMillan reshuffled one-third of his cabinet (the so-called “Night of the Long Knives”). Within just over a year MacMillan was gone too. It is not obvious that someone new to Cabinet would be able to wield enough authority to become Prime Minister within a year or two (May might stay until Brexit is completed at the end of March 2019). There is only one obvious Tory candidate from outside the Cabinet – Ruth Davidson, who would first have to stand for Westminster in a by-election with all the risks that entails, before she could become a Cabinet Minister. If May does stand down as PM before Christmas, or is defeated in a leadership election, then whoever becomes leader will choose their own Cabinet and then being associated with a failed leader will be no recommendation.
I was not aware of one change in the Conservative leadership rules in 2006, covered in Anthony Wells’ blog today at http://ukpollingreport.co.uk/ . May cannot resign as leader of the Tory Party and call a leadership election in which she stands (unlike John Major in 1995). If at least Tory 48 MPs call for her resignation in letters to the Chair of the 1922 Committee she will face a vote of confidence and if she loses this she will not be eligible to stand in the ensuing leadership election.
I cannot recall a Government with so much dead wood in it. There is an uncomfortably high number of genuinely incompetent and even stupid ministers – Davies, Fox, Grayling, Fallon and Leadsome come immedately to mind with the added bonus of Boris Johnson who is unfit for any kind of office let alone that of Foreign Secretary and Michael Gove whose sense of honesty and honour seems defective.
The political reality is probably clear that Mrs May can’t undertake the sort of clear out that the country needs but if she doesn’t act on the worst cases, the adminstration (I can’t see it as a government) will limp on to the inevitabke slaughter at the hands of the EU and the electorate.