Ministry of Boris?

Senior Tories accuse PM of power grab over plans for ‘presidential’ department

BORIS JOHNSON was accused last night of trying to grab ‘presidential powers’ in a dramatic Whitehall shake-up.

Senior Tories criticised plans to be unveiled next week for a ‘prime minister’s department’ designed to make it easier for Mr Johnson to control all government policies.

It would give him the right to appoint ministers who are neither MPs nor members of the House of Lords, as well as direct access to the Government’s purse strings. Number 10 insiders claim the changes will ‘streamline’ Whitehall and enable the UK to match the success of nations such as Singapore and South Korea in combatting the Covid pandemic.

Mr Johnson has privately voiced frustration at the difficulty of getting things done since entering No10, reportedly referring to Whitehall’s ‘chocolate levers’ of power – which snap off in your hands when you pull them.

However, former Cabinet minister David Davis told the Daily Mail the proposals were ‘managerial madness’.

He said: ‘Margaret Thatcher achieved the greatest transformation in recent British history using the Whitehall system that has served this country well. This presidential approach would not have helped with Covid. It didn’t work in the US, which had a worse record than us.

‘Our problem was not the Whitehall system, but a lack of comprehension of how to tackle it.

‘Singapore and South Korea did better than us because they have been through it before. Neither has the kind of democratic standards we aspire to. Our Government spent a fortune on external advice during Covid and it didn’t work.’

Mr Davis also challenged the idea of recruiting more ministers from outside Parliament.

He said: ‘Our system, where ministers have the nerve-racking experience of being held to account by 650 MPs, is one of the reasons we generally have high standards. To change it in this way is amazingly ignorant and will make corruption and cronyism more likely not less.’

Since the start of the pandemic, the Government has faced a wave of accusations of handing contracts

‘Dead hand of Sir Humphrey’

and jobs to firms and individuals with links to the Tory Party.

Under proposals by a cross-party commission backed by the Government, the Chief Secretary to the Treasury would become a minister in the ‘PM’s department’.

This mirrors the White House, where the Office of Management and Budget controls the president’s multi-billion-dollar annual spending, with considerable power over key government agencies.

Some Tory MPs fear the plans, masterminded by Cabinet Office minister Michael Gove, could lead to a repeat of tensions between the Prime Minister’s office and the Treasury , which have undermined UK governments over many years.

A Tory grandee told the Mail: ‘If Cabinet government isn’t working there is only reason for it: the person at the top isn’t doing their job.

‘There is nothing in the current system to stop Boris being as effective as Thatcher. But he has to have her focus and work as hard.

‘This Government does not function well because he appointed a weak Cabinet. It is full of cronies who are not there on merit.’

But an ally of Mr Johnson defended the plans drawn up by the commission, which included four former mandarins, leading entrepreneurs and Opposition politicians.

Every prime minister since Tony Blair had ‘struggled with the dead hand of Sir Humphrey’ – a reference to the bureaucratic mandarin in the sitcom Yes Minister, the ally said.

‘The PM got Brexit done more or less single-handedly and wants to be able to deliver similar results across the board. It is nonsense to say it gives him presidential powers.’