Now May needs a strong deputy – Hunt is the obvious candidate
Unless Green is replaced by someone with flair and experience, government will grind to a halt
It was never clear how Theresa May would hang on to Damian Green. It’s not so much the websites that someone (not, he insists, him) was browsing on his laptop or that someone (not, he insists, him) registered him on an adultery website using his mother’s maiden name as a password. Politicians often have unusual personal lives, and the public tend not to mind as long as they do their job. But when he lied about what police had found on his computer, it was too much. Yes, the Prime Minister depended on him as her deputy – but she could either cling on to him at all costs, or do the decent thing.
For all her shortcomings, Mrs May can be relied upon to do the decent thing. It’s easy to see why she was so keen to keep him. Her job now involves negotiating Brexit, and not much else – so the deputy Prime Minister ends up overseeing the rest of government.
She needs someone competent, whose judgment she trusts and – importantly – isn’t itching to dethrone and replace her. Only Mr Green ticked all three boxes. Her choice now is between an effective minister who does want her job, or an underperformer who lacks the ambition. This leaves her with a problem.
The stability of HMS Tory in the turbulent seas of the last few months can be credited, in no small part, to its deputy helmsman. Mr Green was – is – a Remainer who faithfully followed the Prime Minister’s line on Brexit and was trusted by all. It would be his job, for example, to square the Welsh government on the latest Brussels talks. He sat on a huge number of Mrs May’s sub-committees, where government decisions are made.
“If I had Damian’s agreement on something,” says one Cabinet member, “then I pretty much had the PM too.” Mrs May struggles to communicate with her colleagues, but she relied on Mr Green to do so on her behalf. That worked for everyone.
He was also a human peace offering to her party after the general election. Beforehand she relied on two special advisers who laid down the law to her ministers. This led to a frisson between the Prime Minister and her Cabinet, and a deep dysfunction in government that led to the debacle of the election campaign.
Mrs May then agreed to sack the advisers and instead rely on Mr Green, a popular alternative. He has served his purpose: to keep the Cabinet, and government, together over the many occasions when it looked like falling apart.
The importance of his job became apparent when, under the pressure of investigation, he stopped doing it. If he wasn’t explaining Brexit talks to Northern Irish politicians, then no one else was: hence, disaster. If he didn’t agree housing policy, and knock heads together, then there would be no progress. This is precisely Mrs May’s problem now: unless Mr Green is replaced by someone with flair and experience, her government will grind to a halt.
Not so long ago, she might have looked to her former chief whip, Gavin Williamson, to act as deputy. But since being promoted to Defence Secretary, he has switched from loyalist to challenger and has started his own black-ops mission against No 10. His fuss about the defence budget – telling the Chancellor that he can’t use military aircraft until the Treasury pays for it – is a battle not just with Philip Hammond but the Prime Minister too, as she is also digging her heels in over the defence budget. She can’t afford a deputy who uses promotion as a launch pad for an attack.
Michael Gove can bring zest and heft to any brief – there would be no one better to equip the Government with a coherent, reforming zeal. But everything he’d say or do would be seen as a leadership bid.
Oliver Letwin or Francis Maude could be brought, Smiley-like, out of semi-retirement: both know Whitehall backwards, neither imagine themselves as prime minister and both could handle the workload. But she has no relationship with either. She only trusts two remaining Cabinet members: James Brokenshire and Karen Bradley, both of whom worked for her in the Home Office. Neither is seen as a plausible candidate for Green’s replacement.
But Mrs May is entering a third phase of her premiership. The first was her period of mini-dictatorship, before the general election. Afterwards, her mission was survival – getting past the first phase of Brexit talks. This has now been accomplished, to a degree that still isn’t fully appreciated. A cash-fortrade Brexit deal is, essentially, done. She has survived the election disaster, a party conference implosion, parliamentary defeat and now the loss of a third Cabinet member in two months. A lesser Prime Minister would have run for the hills. It’s wrong to call her Teflon Theresa, as she was sometimes called when Home Secretary: at 327 degrees, Teflon melts. She is made of something more enduring.
She will enter next year as a Prime Minister who has walked through fire – so she can afford to appoint a deputy who is ambitious, but not aggressively so. Someone seeking to lead the party will do their best to put together a coherent, reforming Conservative agenda – which is why Jeremy Hunt is the obvious candidate. As one of Britain’s longest-serving Health Secretaries he has lasted the course in one of the toughest jobs in government. He has always had his eye on No 10 – ten years ago, I remember jokes about his printing a Hunt 2018 T-shirt – but he is not so ambitious as to be divisive. And no one really hates him in the parliamentary party, which is no small feat in the current climate.
A new deputy should come as part of a wider reshuffle. Mrs May is no longer a prisoner of her Cabinet, a fact she should mark by moving them around and promoting some of the newer MPS.
Not so long ago, she looked like she’d be remembered for the election calamity and nothing else. Now, she can hope to be remembered for negotiating a successful Brexit deal and overseeing a rejuvenation of her party.
But for this she’d need a strong deputy and younger blood in her Cabinet. The perfect agenda for the new year.