PM must shuffle off sorry pack of jokers
Cabinet ministers are enjoying an unusually happy new year. Normally they’re dreading the PM reshuffling them, or shuffling them out of the pack entirely.
But these are not normal times. Theresa May has her own job to worry about, and any moment it could be taken from her.
Otherwise she might reasonably be thinking of stripping away dead wood (Chris Grayling), nakedly ambitious rivals (Sajid Javid) and the nice but dim (Liz Truss).
To be fair, no one noticed that Treasury Secretary Liz was lacking in grey matter while Esther McVey was there.
Once Amber Rudd had replaced Esther at Work and Pensions, the Cabinet’s average IQ rose markedly. It was Elizabeth I who claimed to have “the body of a weak and feeble woman, but the heart and stomach of a king”.
Mrs May might have the heart and stomach for a fight, but she’s too weak and feeble to dare shake up her ministers.
Most cannot believe Grayling – Greything, as colleagues call him – is at the Cabinet table at all. Before fouling up trains, boats and planes he messed up as Justice Secretary.
Cuts to legal aid meant domestic violence victims facing abusers in court, and he unlawfully banned prisoners from receiving books.
In his new job as Transport Secretary he opened his car door and knocked a cyclist off her bike.
Last year Greything’s new timetables caused rail chaos, his failure to curb drones – real or imagined – brought Christmas air chaos, and sea chaos beckons with a £13.8million contract to a ferry firm with no ferries. Greything wants to draw a line under 2018. I’ll bet he does. But 2019 got off to a bad start with 3.1 per cent rail- fare rises, while he cackhandedly tried to eclipse commuter misery with new railcards for 26 to 30-year-olds and half price tickets if you’re 16 or 17. Er, why not just make fares less of a rip-off for us all, Chris?
Meanwhile Sajid Javid managed to turn a drama into a crisis by declaring a trickle of migrants paddling across the Channel a “major incident” as if we faced military invasion. This might have carried a smidgen of credibility had the Home Secretary done so from the steps of an aircraft about to whisk him home to chair an urgent Cobra meeting.
Instead he thought he could carry on playing David Attenborough on a family safari 6,000 miles away in South Africa.
Now he’s upset the French, whose help we need. Mr Javid’s allies accuse No10 of leaking his whereabouts to embarrass him. Get away!
Theresa May must have rubbed her hands with glee as she gave the go-ahead to pour pee on his lack of judgement.
May has heart for a fight but not for a shake-up Human ingenuity can send a NASA space probe four billion miles to the end of our solar system to photograph a snowman and light-speed images back to Earth. So why on Earth can’t Parliament’s bright sparks fix Commons wifi so it doesn’t conk out once you’ve travelled 40 feet?