Boris’s dilemma: pick Brexiteers or power?
BORIS Johnson has told friends how he’s planning his Cabinet appointments this week. He’s drawn a Venn diagram. In one circle are the people who believe in Brexit. In the other are the people capable of running the country. Unfortunately, observes our incoming prime minister, the two circles don’t overlap very much. Of course all premiers face a version of this dilemma — do you promote the best or the most loyal? But it is more acute for Mr Johnson, for he enters Downing Street as the least powerful prime minister in our modern history.
Why? Because the power of the British premier stems from three sources. First, there are the direct executive powers that flow from the royal prerogative. They mainly involve the deployment of our military and intelligence assets. In the most extreme, these include the authority to launch our nuclear weapons — a procedure Mr Johnson will soon be instructed on, including the writing of sealed letters containing posthumous instructions to our Trident submarines should our country be obliterated. Two versions of the same letter won’t do in this case, Mr Johnson. That leads to the second source of power — a prime minister is chosen because he or she commands a majority in the Commons. This is where the ability to do the things that really affect the lives of millions of people comes from — like set tax rates, determine public services, hand out entitlements and shape the criminal law. But Mr Johnson doesn’t have a majority. On paper it could soon be down to just one; in practice, the 2017 election fiasco and the splintering of the Tory MPs into armed factions means the Government is at the mercy of Parliament — as Mrs May discovered when her Brexit deal was defeated, and Mr Johnson will find out if he tries to pursue a no-deal departure.
That leaves the last source of power — patronage. That’s a twoedged sword for any premier. Reshuffles are like a game of musical chairs where only one in three players gets a chair, while the other two go off and start working out how to get someone else to organise the music next time. Most prime ministers assemble Cabinets that reflect a balance of abilities, political persuasions, diversity and geography. But Mr Johnson may think differently. For patronage is all he’s got. If he can’t get the EU to renegotiate the Brexit deal (which it won’t), and he can’t force no-deal through Parliament, and he doesn’t want an election (which he fears) or a referendum (which his party hates), then his only option other than extending our membership of the EU is to somehow get the Conservatives to vote for a version of Mrs May’s deal.
How do you do that, when you yourself resigned over that deal? Answer: assemble a government of Brexiteers. That means a Brexiteer chancellor, Brexiteer foreign secretary and a Brexiteer Bank of England governor. Then you can tell your supporters to hold their noses and vote for the May plan, because at least the future is in hands of true believers. There’s only one problem with this cunning plan: as Mr Johnson’s Venn diagram reveals, they’re not good enough to run the country – and the country will find that out and eject the person who appointed them.