New year, same old Tory twaddle

THERE is no step forward that Theresa May can make without taking two backwards.

Her much-vaunted reshuffle to refresh her Government and make the stale and pale Tories look like the country they are meant to represent has backfired. Again.

Here are the potted hightlights – if you can call them that – of her latest PR disaster, launched in a slack news week when all the attention was on the door of No10:

● Her media team misfired badly – unforgiveable in the digital age – by tweeting incorrect changes to her top team.

● Ministers who have underperformed in their roles refused to be budged – and survived in post purely by being thrawn.

● The sorry saga told no story other than underlining May’s own crushing weaknesses.

● No great diversity, with more privatelyeducated Cabinet ministers than before.

● And in a desperate effort to get some gender representation, the dreaded Esther McVey has been promoted to run the DWP.

Fox and chicken coop doesn’t cover it when it comes to McVey and vulnerable people.

This is the minister who, in her last stint in charge of welfare, revelled in the bedroom tax and defended shoddy fitness-to-work tests.

Welfare campaigners are shuddering at the return of this benefits vampire.

Higher up the rafters in the Cabinet belfry, nothing – to quote Theresa May herself – has changed. On Brexit, we still have bungler-inchief David Davis in charge of, well, bungling.

Without the slightest hint of irony, the Brexit Secretary has penned a whiny letter to his boss Theresa complaining that the EU are preparing for the UK to walk away from negotiations without a trade deal.

That had them spluttering in their cafe au lait in Brussels. Whose idea was a no-deal Brexit in the first place?

May herself has consistently repeated her mantra that no deal is better than a bad deal and set aside £3.7billion to prepare Britain for leaving the EU without an agreement.

Ruled by a Government bereft of a clue, 2018 is already looking disappointingly similar to 2017.