Nice old donkey Sir Patrick was led away to the glue factory
AT ease, troops. Unfix bayonets. Loosen those chinstraps. Yes, Gunner Smudge, you may light a Woodbine, provided you go to the trench’s designated smoking area.
Some of you may have been under the impression the balloon was going up and R-Day (for Reshuffle) was going to be ‘a bit of a show’, as battledogs say. Well, er, it wasn’t. Not so much a shuffle as a slowmotion shimmy.
At glacial speed through the day we learned that the big posts would remain in the same hands. More Chancellor Hammond (groan). More Home Secretary Rudd. More Health (and now Social Care) Secretary Hunt, who may have insisted on an umpire decision review and refused to walk after initially being given the finger.
Greg Clark was left at Business. Industrialists unscrewed whisky bottles and poured themselves quadruples. Mr Clark is far from scintillating.
For the capital’s diplomatic spouses, meanwhile, there was better news. Boris would remain Foreign Secretary, a man to bring jollity to any wine and cheese evening but also uncertainty in the orbit of the ambassadorial residence’s burgeoning tray of champagne flutes.
Boris’s reconfirmation was not announced until after 3pm and by that time some of the paparazzi in an Arctic Downing Street were so cold, they could barely press their camera buttons.
In most respects it was a case of ‘Carry on, Cabinet’. The most exciting promotions? David Gauke – ‘Who he?’ cries the nation – was sent to Justice.
Mr Gauke was previously in charge of welfare. At Justice he replaced David Lidington – ‘ Eh?’ said the British people, again struggling to put a face to this titan of our public affairs. Mr Lidington was
sent to the Cabinet Office to become the new Damian Green, or rather the new Damian Green from the navel upwards.
Tory party chairman Sir Patrick McLoughlin, perhaps three years late, was led away to the glue factory. Nice old donkey, McLoughlin, but spectacularly ineffective.
‘He’s done amazing work,’ said congenial bruiser James Cleverly, newly promoted party vice-chairman. An innocent enough fib. Karen Bradley was sent to Northern Ireland. She may enjoy the more liquid aspects of that office.
The rolling news bods, particularly those reporters who were in Downing Street from the wee hours, shivering in their winter coats and jumping up and down to prevent their toes from going numb, must feel the most frightful fools.
Will they ever again believe what they read in the Sunday papers which had hyperventilated with so many theories about who was for the chop? Sky News had laid on all sorts of Reshuffle Day plans and had lined up endless pundits to explain what all these ingenious changes meant.
But by late afternoon Sky’s hot-shot presenter Kay Burley, a tigress who can make Jeremy Paxman look like Private Godfrey, had so lost interest in the political news that she was down on the studio floor doing press-ups with some muscle man in a New Year keep-fit feature. Westminster had spent the day a- quiver, to little avail. Those of us who have rushed wives to maternity hospitals on inconclusive missions, only to return home later with them still defiantly pregnant, will know the feeling.
In the Commons chamber it was Home Office Questions and peppery Tory Philip Davies (Shipley), who has long attacked Mrs May from the Right, raised a laugh by making an early contribution.
‘I thought I’d better get in quick before the Prime Minister’s inevitable call to me,’ said Mr Davies, self-teasingly.
Looking down at the benches from the galleries, it was not hard to spot the ones who ache to be minister and those who, like Mr Davies, consider it the higher honour to be outspoken in defence of their constituents.
Taunton Deane’s ultra- eager Rebecca Pow, who is no danger to Mensa, exemplified the wannabes. She strained to ask the front bench helpful questions.
She boinged to her feet with goody-goodiness. There is no guarantee she will ever make the grade. Why do they do it?