May torn over timing of Hunt’s promotion

THERESA MAY is considering delaying a promotion for Jeremy Hunt when she reshuffles her Cabinet next week because of the worsening crisis in the NHS, The Daily Telegraph understands.

Mrs May wants the Health Secretary to take over the role of de facto deputy prime minister vacated by Damian Green last month but has been warned that the timing could not be worse.

She will spend the weekend deciding whether to keep Mr Hunt in his post until the spring, rather than moving him as part of a reshuffle aimed at refreshing the Government.

Cabinet “big beasts” Philip Hammond, the Chancellor, Amber Rudd, the Home Secretary, Boris Johnson, the Foreign Secretary, and David Davis, the Brexit Secretary, are expected to stay in post, as Mrs May wants to avoid “destabilising” the Government.

The Prime Minister could announce a shake-up as early as Monday. She cannot delay it much longer because she must replace Mr Green as the chairman of nine Cabinet sub-committees that reconvene in the middle of this month.

Mr Hunt is the man she wants for that role, but Mrs May could be forced to delay until the NHS crisis is over. Last night health officials raised fears it could deepen, with freezing weather forecast this weekend and a flu epidemic declared across the Channel.

One Cabinet source said: “Everyone is expecting Jeremy to get Damian Green’s job, but it would look bad to replace the Health Secretary in the middle of an NHS emergency.

“There is a debate going on about whether she could reshuffle other posts and somehow delay Jeremy’s promotion, perhaps by announcing he has got the job but saying he won’t start for another few weeks.”

Gavin Barwell, Mrs May’s chief of staff, is understood to have won a debate in favour of promoting younger MPS after No 10 aides expressed fears it might cause a backlash from sacked ministers.

While Mr Hunt is poised to be the biggest winner in the reshuffle, Sir Patrick Mcloughlin, the party chairman, is one of those who will leave the Cabinet to make way for new faces, and Justine Greening, the Education Secretary, and Greg Clark, the Business Secretary, are likely to be demoted.

Brandon Lewis, the immigration minister, is tipped to replace Sir Patrick, with James Cleverly, Mr Lewis’s parliamentary private secretary, made deputy chairman. Others expecting a call include Claire Perry, the climate change minister, Dominic Raab, the justice minister, and Anne Milton, a former nurse who could replace Mr Hunt.

Calls for Jacob Rees-mogg, the outspoken Brexit-supporting backbencher, to be given a Cabinet role are likely to go unheeded, as he has never held a ministerial post.

On the day Boris Johnson was whipping up the Tory conference crowd with his “let the lion roar” Brexit speech in October, Jeremy Hunt was quietly going about his business talking Brexit on LBC Radio.

As a leading member of the Remain campaign, the Health Secretary was asked, had he changed his mind at all about Brexit since the EU referendum vote?

Mr Hunt disclosed that indeed he had, and now considered leaving the EU to be a positive move, blaming the “arrogance” of the European Commission for turning him against the bloc.

It may not have been obvious at the time, but his sudden conversion from Remoaner to Brexiteer cleared the final hurdle for his expected promotion to the role of de facto deputy prime minister later to be vacated by Damian Green.

By having a foot in both camps, Mr Hunt is now ideally placed to bring the opposing sides of the Cabinet together, and chair the nine Cabinet subcommittees – three of them Brexitrelated – that were adeptly headed by Mr Green before his downfall.

Mr Green, of course, was still very much in post when Mr Hunt made his comments about Brexit to LBC’S Iain Dale. No one could have foreseen the Westminster sexual harassment scandal that brought down Mr Green; even the Harvey Weinstein scandal was yet to break at the time.

But Mr Hunt has been tipped for promotion ever since Theresa May kept him as Health Secretary in her first Cabinet in 2016.

On that occasion he entered Downing Street without his customary NHS lapel badge – interpreted as a sign that he thought his time as Health Secretary was over – but left with the badge returned to his buttonhole.

He has rewarded Mrs May’s patronage by loyally pushing on with a series of reforms, and has become one of the Government’s most dependable media performers.

Having led the Department of Health for more than five years (he would be the longestserving Health Secretary if he carried on until June) Mr Hunt may be a hate figure for much of the NHS, but he has earned the respect of colleagues for toughing out such a difficult job for so long. He also served as culture secretary for two years, encompassing the London 2012 Olympics, and with five years as a shadow minister before that, Mr Hunt is one of the most experienced ministers in the Cabinet. “He has earned his spurs,” one Government minister said yesterday. “To keep the lid on health for nearly six years deserves reward, and he doesn’t really have any enemies in the Cabinet.

“Unlike Damian Green, he can also appear on the radio and television defending Brexit, because he has been prepared to say he was wrong when he campaigned for Remain. That’s something neither Damian nor Theresa May has been able to bring themselves to do.” As well as defending Brexit, he has also defended Theresa May to the hilt while others were briefing against her. Last month he memorably warned Tory rebels that if they did not get in line behind their leader they risked scuppering Brexit altogether.

In an interview on ITV’S Peston on Sunday programme, Mr Hunt warned those considering voting against the Government on the progress of the EU Withdrawal Bill: “If we don’t back Theresa May we will have no Brexit – and she is doing an unbelievably challenging job amazingly well.”

At the age of 51, Mr Hunt still has the energy and ambition to take on fresh challenges, without Mrs May having to look over her shoulder to check he is not about to stab her in the back.

Like Damian Green, Mr Hunt has never harboured serious ambitions of succeeding Mrs May as Prime Minister or Conservative Party leader – which cannot be said for many other senior members of the Cabinet.

“He is a likeable chap,” one Cabinet source said yesterday. “He will have plenty of support from the Cabinet if he takes on Damian’s old role, and that’s not something you could say about many ministers.

“The Prime Minister needs someone who can go into bat for her when she’s not there, someone who can take on the workload of the Cabinet committees and make progress without threatening her authority, and Jeremy is the person who ticks all those boxes.”